Jed McKenna's notebook. All bonus material from the enlightenment trilogy 9780980184877

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Jed McKenna's Notebook: All Bonus Content from the Enlightenment Trilogy
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Jed McKenna’s Notebook All Bonus Material from The Enlightenment Trilogy Jed McKenna Smashwords Edition ISBN: 978-0-9801848-7-7 Copyright © 2010 Wisefool Press All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without written permission of the author or publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. * * *

Table of Contents Bonus Content from Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing Recipe for Failure Interview with Jed McKenna The Deficiency of Recorded Accounts Dr. Pillay Interview Impersonating Jed McKenna Blues for Buddha Bonus Content from Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment

Jed McKenna Interview Zen and the Art of Self-Mutilation Mannahatta Bonus Content from Spiritual Warfare I, Witness The New World The Golden Door Visionary Goofballs Nothing Forever: A Post-Apocalyptic Lightmare Wisefool Press * * * Those who know how to think need no teachers. Mahatma Gandhi * * * Bonus Content from

Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing * * * Recipe for Failure In the knowledge of the Atman, which is the dark night to the ignorant,

the recollected mind is fully awake and aware. The ignorant are awake in their sense-life, which is darkness to the sage. Bhagavad Gita Kamiel came prepared. He carries a bulging, well-worn, triple rubber-banded notebook full of thoughts, ideas, and questions accumulated during several years of reading spiritual books, attending spiritual gatherings, and participating in spiritual internet discussion groups. “A lot of teachers,” he informs me, “say that the necessary first step in awakening is dissatisfaction; a gnawing discontentment on the feeling level. Is that what you mean when you talk about intent?” Most of Kamiel’s reading in recent years has centered on the works of Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramesh Balsekar, Jean Klein and that whole crew. He seems philosophically inclined toward the peculiar brand of nonduality and neoAdvaita Vedanta that attracts a growing audience these days. Its allure seems based on its simple core truth; not-two. While not-two is not exactly true, two is exactly not true, and therefore succinctly marks the endpoint of dualistic thought; you’d think. Where nondual enthusiasts go astray is in trying to erect a philosophical structure atop this simple truth. Truth is always simple and never provides the basis for any philosophy, but Kamiel is determined to believe that his ramshackle nondual philosophy is structurally sound. I’ve explained to him that you can’t build a philosophy of This on a foundation of Not-This, but he is quite attached to his improbable little edifice and not yet ready to decamp. Which is perfectly fine. Waking up is a stop-and-go journey. It takes a lot of hard work to reach a plateau like nonduality and pausing to rest and acclimatize before moving on is part of the process. Nonduality may not be the final destination new arrivals might suppose, but getting there is an impressive and challenging feat and the views are rewarding in all directions. What’s more, I like Kamiel and generally enjoy talking with him. He asks good questions that elicit interesting answers. I’m usually limited to speaking in monologues rather than dialogues, but it’s the student who calls the tune and Kamiel makes a good job of it.

“Well,” I respond after thinking about his question a bit, “I guess it’s a matter of degree. Let’s try out a new analogy. I’m making this up on the fly so bear with me. Here’s the situation: You’re sitting in your skyscraper office a hundred stories off the ground thinking about how successful you are and how your life is just grand. With me so far? In terms of satisfaction, you’re very satisfied. You have it all; fancy office, great views, the respect and admiration of those around you, everything you ever wanted. Okay?” “Okay.” “So, you’re like that—happy, content, well-satisfied—for however long; months, years, decades. But then one day, for whatever reason, dissatisfaction begins to creep in. Something about your office starts to bug you. It starts with little things. You’re dissatisfied with your curtains; they don’t go with the credenza at all. ‘What was I thinking?’ you wonder. ‘How could I have been so blind?’ And now that you’re looking more closely, it’s obvious that the carpet is a fiasco and the artwork is just an embarrassment. One minute you’re happy, the next minute you’re very dissatisfied. Extremely dissatisfied. This office is simply not an accurate outward representation of your inner professional. You’ve outgrown it.” “It actually sounds like a pretty cool office.” “Yes, well, that’s what everyone else thinks; your friends, colleagues, your family. They think you’ve got it made and that you’re nuts for wanting to mess with it. Of course, you’re only dissatisfied when you’re in the office. You pretty much forget about it when you’re anywhere else. Right?” “Right.” “And you’re following the analogy, right? These things can be a bit wobbly the first time out. Your office represents your relationship to the larger questions of life and your dissatisfaction represents—” “Got it.” “Good. So what’s the answer? What do you do about this very dissatisfying office of yours?” “Uh, I don’t know,” he shrugs. “Redecorate?”

“Yeah, that sounds right. But this time you’re going to be very serious about it. You’re going to bring in a top-notch decorator and strip the place down to the floorboards and start from scratch. You’re not going to be a mere dabbler; you’re going all the way with this. You’re a serious professional and you deserve a serious office. See what I mean? See how what started as a gnawing little dissatisfaction has grown into a life-transforming event?” “Okay,” he says dutifully. “So that’s what you do. You go out and buy books and magazines on interior design. You talk to people and attend lectures and events. You hire the best decorator you can find; someone you resonate with deeply. You yourself are being transformed by this experience. You yourself are growing, developing, expanding. It’s very challenging, but you’re taking a no-nonsense approach. It’s slow going, but little by little change is occurring. Your office is starting to look and feel like a genuine outer representation of your inner professional. It may take years to get it right, but nothing will stop you. This is too important. In fact, it has become one of the most important things in your life, right up there with home and family. See what I mean?” “Yes,” he says eagerly. “The master decorator represents the guru and the redecorating process represents the spiritual transformation we undergo when we truly begin to challenge our beliefs and seek higher knowledge. What started out as kind of a gnawing dissatisfaction has grown into the impetus for important change, and although it might seem like a bad thing at first, this is how the process of change works. This is how we develop, how we grow.” “Exactly,” I say. “Nobody acts from contentment. We need problems to solve or else we vegetate. That great office was once something we strived to get, then it was achieved and enjoyed in contentment, but then discontent sets in to let us know that it’s time to move on.” “So,” says Kamiel, “that’s what the teachers are talking about when they discuss the dissatisfaction needed to spur us on, right? It might seem bad or uncomfortable, but it’s really a good thing?” “Sounds right,” I say. “And that’s the sort of determination and focus that’s required in order to awaken from delusion? To become truth-realized?” He smiles, excited, like he’s just now

getting the big picture. “So that’s what you mean by purity of intent!” I smile back. “Fuck no. That’s what I mean by recipe for failure.” His dismay is instantly apparent. I’ve cut him off in the first rush of a new grokking and now he’s confused and hurt. I did this intentionally. I didn’t allow myself to be drawn into this “A lot of teachers say—” conversation just wanting to make a point; I wanted counterpoint. That’s what the dialogue has been up until now because I wanted to make a clear distinction. This is the critical distinction between seekers and finders. This is where the line is drawn; a line the existence of which “a lot of teachers” don’t even suspect. “That’s the sort of pathetic, half-assed approach that is absolutely certain to keep you confined to your current state. That’s the sort of approach that everyone takes, and that’s why they fail.” He visibly and audibly gulps. “Oh.” “The very people and institutions that are supposedly dedicated to waking us up are doing exactly the opposite. They are lulling us into a more comfortable sleep. That’s what we really want and that’s what they really provide.” He doesn’t seem pleased. “Oh, God… well then… then what drives the process of true awakening?” “Purity of intent, but what does that really mean? Okay, you’re back in the office again, totally satisfied with everything. Life is great. Okay?” “Yeah.” “Okay. So now dissatisfaction starts to creep in on you, but this time the dissatisfaction stems from the fact that you smell smoke.” “The building is on fire now?” “Wake up and smell the coffin, Kamiel. The building has always been on fire, you were just repressing that knowledge until now. But now you’re aware of it and it’s causing you some dissatisfaction. Quite a lot, in fact, and more with every passing

moment. Now for the first time you realize that the flames are right outside the door and the temperature is rising. Acrid black smoke is pouring in. The door bursts into flames. There is no exit. Now you’re very, very dissatisfied with your office. In fact, you’re starting to hate your office quite profoundly. See how this dissatisfaction— this gnawing discontentment on the, uh, feeling level—is of a more immediate and compelling nature then the dissatisfaction brought on by the decor?” He nods mutely. “Sure. Now your dissatisfaction with your office is quite intense. Searing, really. In fact, your dissatisfaction is so intense that it feels like you’re on fire, like you can’t stand to be in your own skin, like anything would be better than more of this. Now you have no thought at all for career, home, or family. Due to a change in your personal circumstances they’ve all been reduced to complete irrelevance. Beliefs and concepts disappear and even death is suddenly small. You’re very focused now. You’re in the moment, very present. The flames are feet away. Your dissatisfaction with your office is well beyond anything even a master redecorator could handle for you, agree?” He nods. “And there’s no return, is there? No going back. No do-over. The fire is here. It’s a fact. Do you see that?” He nods again. “And you’re completely alone in all this. There’s no rescue. Your office is engulfed in flames and there’s no one here to save you. Not Jesus or Buddha or the Pope or your mama. This is your dissatisfaction. This is your problem. This is your agony. This is you about to burn to death, okay?” “Okay.” “Okay. So what do you do?” “Huh?” “Your world is burning. The whole office is in flames. You’re in a hopeless, noescape situation. The pain has started and will only get worse. I think we can safely say that your dissatisfaction is now quite pronounced. What do you do?”

“Christ, I don’t know. Go out the window?” “Really?” “Hell, I don’t know. What else?” “Yeah, I guess so. You’re in this inferno of an office while outside the window is blue sky, white clouds, and freedom from suffering. That seems like the only possible solution given your very dissatisfying circumstances. But—” “But what?” “Well, that’s not Hollywood glass in those skyscraper windows. You start flinging yourself against the window but it doesn’t give. Your dissatisfaction is of such intensity that you might break bones and crack your skull from hurling yourself desperately against the window, all to no avail.” “Yeah, then what? What happens?” “Well, the obvious thing is that you might simply perish in the hellish inferno. No law against dying.” He looks at me desperately. “Or, maybe you have some object that allows you to break the window out. Or maybe the sheer intensity of your—what are we calling it, dissatisfaction?—allows you to break through the unbreakable window. So, boom!, you blow out the window. Now there’s nothing left in the equation but you, the raging fire, and a hundred story plummet to the sidewalk below. Everything is suddenly quite simple. Perhaps for the first time, your life is perfectly clear.” “Yeah? Then?” “Burn or jump, I guess.” “Burn or jump?” “Do you see another option?”

“Burn or jump,” he says flatly. “When you become so dissatisfied with your office that the hundred story plummet and the sidewalk seem like the better option, so dissatisfied that you actually hurl yourself out the window, then you know the level of dissatisfaction necessary to awaken from delusion.” He is silent for several moments, head bowed, thoughtful. “I guess dissatisfaction isn’t the right word.” “Maybe not,” I agree. “I call it purity of intent, but that doesn’t really capture it either.” “And that’s something every enlightened master went through?” “You say it like there are countless enlightened masters dotting the spiritual landscape, but there are extremely few, and now you know why.” “Jesus,” he mumbles, seemingly sincere in his effort to truly appreciate what he’s just been told. “Jesus.” I deliver the moral of the story in three easy pieces. “The price. Of truth. Is everything.” “Jesus,” he repeats. * * * Interview with Jed McKenna The truth is that enlightenment is neither remote nor unattainable. It is closer than your skin and more immediate than your next breath. If we wonder why so few seem able to find that which can never be lost, we might recall the child who was looking in the light for a coin he dropped in the dark because “the light is better over here.” Jed McKenna

Q: What is enlightenment? A: No-self. Q: Okay, what is no-self? Abiding non-dual awareness. Q: Okay, what is—? I can’t tell you what it is; no one can. It’s not a thing, it’s not a concept, it’s not a place. There’s no explaining fire to someone who’s never seen fire; no description can do justice to the direct experience of fire. I use terms like abiding non-dual awareness and no-self and truth-realization not because they capture it, but because they seem the least misleading. Q: Most people define spiritual enlightenment very differently from the way you describe it, as if they are talking about an unrelated state. How can there be such disparity? Enlightenment is absolute. It doesn’t come in varieties or degrees. It’s not open to interpretation. But the most important thing is that it’s self-verifiable and completely available to reason. Anyone who wants to understand can understand. It doesn’t require interpreters or intermediaries. It’s just sitting there, right out in the open, for anyone who cares to look. No one has to rely on me or anyone else. Becoming enlightened may be a real ball-buster, but enlightenment theory is a breeze. The first chapter of the book is titled “That which cannot be simpler.” That’s an exact statement. Enlightenment is that which cannot be simplified further; cannot be further reduced. Q: Which brings us to the question of who is enlightened? Who is writing the book? Who is teaching? It’s very difficult to reconcile the appearance of self with the claim of no-self. And yet, there it is. True self is no-self and there’s just no way to make it sound reasonable. I can’t express it in a way that anyone is going to get it. I’m aware that there’s an apparent contradiction, but it doesn’t appear to me. It’s like the gateless

gate thing. It looks one way from there and another from here. All I can say is come here and see for yourself. Q: That sounds like a leap of faith, not logic. It’s simple math. Anyone can verify for themselves the truth of non-duality; the fact that all is one. Any reasonably able-minded person can put it together on their own. From there, it’s a short step to no-self. Once you have established in your own mind the truth of nonduality, then countless fictions, like the idea of a separate self, shall not long endure. Q: You say “reasonably able-minded person.” What’s really required by way of intelligence for this undertaking? Not much, as my own success attests. It all really comes back to intent. If the intent is in place, everything is in place. If the intent isn’t in place, no amount of intelligence will make any difference. Q: So logic is the tool of the mind and desire is the tool of the heart? Sure. Good. Logic—mind—is the sword and intent—heart—is the will to use it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Q: It’s often said that for a book to do well the author must actively promote it through appearances and media exposure. Why won’t you do book signings or radio interviews or any of that? I could answer that a lot of different ways. I could say that the nature of the book doesn’t lend itself to that sort of exposure, which is true. I could say that I’m not disposed to undergo that sort of personal exposure, which is also true. But the larger truth is that the book will succeed or fail on things other than marketing and PR. My job was to competently write the book. The publisher’s job is to competently produce the book and make it available. How the book fares in the marketplace is none of our concern. Q: Do you care if it succeeds or fails? I’d be amused if it succeeds. I’d be relieved if it fails. I had an urge to express certain things and now I have and the urge is gone. That’s really the whole story.

Q: But you’re doing another book. Yeah, there’s more material, more fun stuff, but the first book is a complete expression. There are other things to look at and other ways of looking. We think of enlightenment as the pinnacle, as the best possible thing, but it’s not. There’s something far better and it’s the thing everyone who is interested in spiritual enlightenment is really after. There’s a lot to be said on that subject if we want to achieve a complete expression and provide a valuable service to the reader. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Q: We’ve received many questions about you personally. People want to know about your history, your relationships, your finances, everything. For instance, do you have friends? Do you socialize beyond the student/teacher relationship? This whole thing really has nothing to do with me personally and it would be counter-productive to shift the focus onto me. A mind that is turned outward is turned away from the serious business of awakening. People who aren’t serious about this stuff are always looking for something to latch onto, some external thing to focus on, but all they really want is to maintain an outward focus. There are plenty of people and organizations that exist to perform that very function. Q: It’s easy to understand why people would be curious. The seller/buyer dynamic is the principal on which the entire spiritual marketplace operates, but anyone who wants to make real progress must leave all that codependent, mass-delusion nonsense behind. This isn’t a popularity contest or a democratic process. The major religions have countless millions of intelligent, dedicated adherents, but viewed objectively, they are nothing more than childish fairy tales unworthy of serious consideration. If you can’t see that, if you can’t get that far, if you can’t break free of that rancid consumer mindset, then that’s where you should be shining the light of intellect, not on some guy who wrote some book. I’m not relevant to anyone’s search. I’m just a finger pointing at the moon. There’s nothing to be learned from the finger. Everybody’s eager to find a distraction from the real work of waking up, but that’s all it is, a distraction. I’m a private person and I have no interest in participating in anyone’s evasive maneuvers. Q: You say you’ve stopped teaching. How did you come to that decision?

There was no decision involved, just an observation. It’s easier to understand if we state it more accurately. It’s not that I stopped teaching; it’s that I reached the end of the learning process necessary to bring the book into being. Everything, it turns out, was about the book. The many hundreds of hours I’ve spent in dialog with seekers at all levels of comprehension was a part of the book’s process of becoming. The completion of the book marked the conclusion of the teaching thing. Q: Because, as you’ve said, everything you have to say is in the book? Because everything was always about the book. Not in the sense that I planned it that way, but in the sense that that’s the way it is. You could look at in a very linear fashion and say that I started writing the book on such-and-such a date and finished the book on such-and-such a date, but that’s a very narrow and incomplete view. That would be a very narrow and incomplete way of looking at any creative journey. Once you remove the blinders of time and space and see the flow of things passing into and out of being, you get a much broader and less linear sense of the flow of things. Q: What you’ve called an oceanic view. Right. You can’t really isolate an oceanic event, a wave, for instance. Where in space and time did it begin? Where in space and time does it end? Who can say? It’s just one part of something much larger. Why try to chop it into little pieces? Q: For the purposes of comprehension. For the comfortable illusion of comprehension, sure. And that’s great, nothing wrong with it until it’s time to get serious and dispense with comfortable illusions. But, to bring it back to the teaching thing, I didn’t decide or choose to be done with it, I simply observed that it was over. There it goes, and with it, frankly, goes my interest in spiritual matters. Q: And anyone who would like to have you for a teacher? Seeking a teacher is just ego seeking a reprieve; a stay of execution. Giving oneself over to a teacher or a teaching or the Beloved Guru or whatever is all about staying asleep, not waking up. The first rule in this business is that you are on your own. Ego clings to a teacher like a drowning man clings to a log. The teacher is beloved

the way the log is beloved. The teaching is sacred the way the log is sacred. The log is the savior, saving us from sinking into the cold black depths. Q: But what of the students who achieved their awakening under you? I was just there for them. A midwife can hardly take credit for the child. A signpost can hardly take credit for someone’s successful journey. Q: Will you miss teaching? Do you think you might return to it? I won’t miss it and I don’t think I could return to it if I wanted to. The teacher role is a false persona just like any other; a costume. It’s not the “real” me and I doubt I could muster the energy needed to animate the role anymore. It was a garment I wore and have now cast off. It served its purpose. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Q: Rather than aiding people in their quest for spiritual enlightenment, it seems like you sometimes encourage them to abandon it. You seem to advise people to see it for what it really is, not necessarily so they can attain it, but so they can stop trying. Does that seem like a fair assessment? Definitely. What it really is is so far removed from what many seekers are seeking that it’s only humane to try to wave them off. The overwhelming majority of those who read this will be best served in this way. Only a very tiny percentage will be what I think of as serious people; people who are actually in the general proximity of the journey of awakening. As to the rest, unfulfilled seeking is its own thing—its own life theme—and that’s what most people are really doing. For them, the seeking fills a very real need and that’s the point; the seeking, not the finding. Q: But they are not aware that they are seeking for the experience of seeking, and not for the actual attainment of that which is sought? Sure, necessarily so. And here I should remind you that in the context of being a human being on planet earth, seeking truth makes sense and finding it doesn’t. Q: You’ve actually said that enlightenment is a bit silly. Yeah, the whole business is a little goofy.

Q: It’s strange to hear an enlightened master refer to spiritual enlightenment as “goofy.” I don’t know. It’s all goofy. What’s not goofy? The First Noble Truth isn’t “Life is suffering,” it’s “Life is goofy.” The goofiest people are the ones who take it the most seriously, and no one takes it more seriously than someone who wants to awaken from it. Q: So, spiritual seekers are the goofiest people? Well, the world is full of strangely serious people. Q: Are you trying to avoid saying that spiritual seekers are the goofiest people? No, I’m not saying that because I don’t think spiritual seekers in general are all that serious. Someone who is truly in the process of awakening would be the most serious imaginable person in the world, but that doesn’t apply to many people. Q: Enlightenment is usually touted as the greatest of all achievements, as selfperfection, as the highest aim of humanity, the ultimate goal of every search, but you make it seem almost pointless at times. Well, I wouldn’t want to give the impression that it’s almost pointless. It’s perfectly pointless. Awakening to your true nature is like dying; it’s a certainty, inevitable. You’re going to get there no matter what you do, so why rush? Enjoy your life, it’s free. Cosmic Consciousness and Altered States and Universal Mind are the names of rides in this vast and fascinating dualistic amusement park. So are Poverty and Disease and Despair. Enlightenment, though, is not another ride. Enlightenment means leaving the park altogether, but why leave the park? In the park you can be a saint or a yogi or a billionaire or a world leader or a warlord. Be good, be evil. Happiness, misery, bliss, agony, victory, defeat, it’s all here. What’s the big rush? When the time comes to leave the park, you’ll know and you’ll go, but there’s certainly nothing to be gained by it. Q: So you encourage seekers to abandon the search. I’m not trying to encourage or discourage, I’m just trying to express something that is difficult to express and about which virtually everyone with an interest is egregiously misinformed.

Q: As you say in the book: “In most cases, the enlightenment being bought and sold is not enlightenment at all, but a state of consciousness so crazy-ass wonderful that you’d have to be an idiot not to want it. So insidiously wonderful, in fact, that its radiance has blinded untold millions of seekers to the fact that it doesn’t exist.” Q: Does this seem to capture it? Essentially. The enlightenment that seems desirable isn’t enlightenment, and that aspect of us which is able to desire enlightenment is unable to achieve it won’t survive its onset. Day destroys night. Q: So seeking is doomed to failure? That’s a matter of context. I look at spiritual seekers and they seem, on the whole, pretty content. Maybe that’s because what they’re really seeking is contentment. Seeking enlightenment is an inherent paradox, but who’s really seeking enlightenment? In the introduction to her book Halfway Up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment, Mariana Caplan states: The reality of the present condition of contemporary spirituality in the West is one of grave distortion, confusion, fraud, and a fundamental lack of education. In my opinion there’s no real reason to discriminate. The East is no better off in this regard and perhaps much worse. She also says: The subject of enlightenment itself is one of the biggest arenas of naiveté, ignorance, self-deceit, and confusion in contemporary spirituality. A close second to enlightenment is the category of “mystical” or “spiritual” experiences. I might turn it around and say that contemporary spirituality is one of the biggest arenas of naiveté, ignorance, self-deceit, and confusion in the quest for enlightenment, but you get the idea. Q: It seems like many spiritual teachers adopt the names, clothing or titles of their spiritual heritage, but you steer clear of those trappings. Well, I don’t have any particular teaching or lineage, and no guru ever renamed me because I never had a guru. In any event, I wouldn’t want to give anyone the

impression that truth was proprietary or the exclusive domain of some foreign or ancient culture. Truth is one’s personal domain, any time, any place. If I were to wear robes or have a Hindu name or a Japanese title that would only serve to mislead those who ask me to point the way. I don’t point East or West; I point right back at the seeker. Q: So you don’t think a student needs a guru? That seems to be matter of endless debate. Whatever it is they’re seeking in Guru-based traditions might require a guru, I have no idea. I’m defining spiritual enlightenment as truth-realization and that doesn’t require anything but purity of intent. Q: Purity of intent meaning like you describe in the book when you talk about your own journey? I had a student named Alexander. At one point in his awakening he decided that he needed access to a library in Chicago. I never knew why, but he was sure that the next thing he needed could only be found there. So he started hitchhiking from Los Angeles with no hesitation. He had no money and he looked unkempt and scary so he had trouble getting rides and had to do a lot of walking. He walked right through his soles so he had to insert folded newspaper inside his shoes several times a day. It was winter, so he had to do odd jobs along the way for a used jacket, boots, food; quite an ordeal. Three weeks later he makes it to Chicago. He sleeps in a doorway, eats whatever he can find. He carries books with him that he reads whenever the demands of surviving allow. Q: That sounds like a grueling hardship. That’s my point. If you were to use the word hardship to Alexander as he sat exhausted, cold and hungry in that doorway, he’d have just stared at you as if you were a yapping dog. I’ll also point out that six months earlier Alexander was a very normal guy with a wife, kids, a house and a job. There is no hardship, there’s only the next thing, the next step, the next battle. The point is always to get the next door unlocked. The bible says to pluck out your eye if it offends you. If Alexander’s eye were preventing him from opening the next door, it wouldn’t occur to him not to remove it. That’s the fuel that drives this journey. It’s not in scriptures or temples. It’s no one’s to give or withhold. That’s what I mean by purity of intent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Q: You describe a process of awakening that generally takes two years, plus another ten to integrate, yet many spiritual teachers describe enlightenment as the result of an instantaneous transformative event. I would guess that they’ve undergone the kind of experience that Bucke talks about in the book Cosmic Consciousness; some sort of mystical insight into the heart of creation or something equally transcendent and transformative. Great stuff. I’ve had mystical experiences myself and I wouldn’t even try to express the wonder of them. But the idea that someone can awaken to no-self in a flash is simply absurd. Such people are talking about something wonderful, but it’s not truth-realization. It’s not abiding non-dual awareness. Q: There’s a lot of talk among spiritual teachers suggesting that we’re currently undergoing a massive shift in consciousness and that mankind is entering a new age of spiritual upliftment. Do you see such a shift taking place? No. People who talk about an enlightened humanity are talking about a world where the lamb lies down with the lion and everyone is happy and healthy and whole. In short, a world without conflict, without drama. But that would be very silly since the whole point of duality is division. The whole point of opposites is opposition. This is a drama, not a still-life, and no awakened being would ever suggest that everything wasn’t just perfect the way it is. To return to the amusement park analogy, imagine a group of self-proclaimed visionaries who want to smooth out all the roller coasters so there were no scary plummets or loops, just long, slow, safe circles. Great, but what’s the point? Anyone who says there’s a shift coming and those who follow their teaching will ride the wave are in the sales business, more accurately, they’re in the business of selling something that’s not theirs to sell. They get asked why no one who buys ever receives the product, and this is a stock answer; we’ll all make the big shift together. That’s how they keep the dogs wagging their tails. Q: From the book it seems like you never engaged in any of the normal spiritual activities. You’re not a meditator, you never used a koan, never had a mantra, never had a guru or teacher. This challenges a lot of people’s closely held beliefs about how spiritual realization is attained.

I never thought of waking up as a spiritual pursuit, I just wanted to get to the truth. Looking back, I can see where I might have used the word infinity in a koan-like manner; kind of a Western version of mu. Infinity is beautiful; it destroys everything it touches. It annihilates all concepts, all beliefs, all sense of self. No teacher, teaching, book or practice could ever be as effective as simply allowing the thought of infinity to slowly devour you. Q: Even more so than Spiritual Autolysis? Spiritual Autolysis invariably leads to infinity. I mean, where else? * * * The Deficiency of Recorded Accounts This is the personal account of a two-year journey during which I experienced the falling away of everything I can call a self. It was a journey through an unknown passageway that led to a life so new and different that, despite forty years of varied contemplative experiences, I never suspected its existence. Because it was beyond my expectations, the experience of no-self remained incomprehensible in terms of any frame of reference known to me, and though I searched the libraries and bookstores I did not find there an explanation or an account of a similar journey which, at the time, would have been clarifying and most helpful. Owing then to the deficiency of recorded accounts, I have written these pages trusting that they may be of use to those who share the destiny of making this journey beyond the self. Bernadette Roberts, Introduction The Experience of No-self: A Contemplative Journey * * * Dr. Pillay Interview These four questions came from Dr. Kriben Pillay, editor and founder of The Noumenon Journal.

Q: You’ve referred to enlightenment a few times as ‘abiding non-dual awareness’. Is it possible to say more about what this is? The term Non-Dual Awareness is an attempt to capture the living reality of otherlessness in words. This term—Non-Dual Awareness—seems like a reasonable portrayal of the state from within the state. The word Abiding distinguishes it from any of the fleeting states commonly mistaken for, or sold as, Spiritual Enlightenment. Actually, I think the worst term for Spiritual Enlightenment is Spiritual Enlightenment. As I said in the book, I didn’t realize until several years after my awakening that what I had achieved/become was what people meant when they said Spiritual Enlightenment; at least, what those people meant who used the term to mean the absolute state rather than a higher-level dreamstate like Unity Consciousness. The experience of Unity Conscious certainly feels more like something you’d want to call Spiritual Enlightenment, but it’s not lasting, so what is it? A sweet dream. The most wonderful thing we can experience, I’d agree, but not a permanent awakening from delusion. The best term might be Truth-Realization. The term Spiritual Enlightenment perpetuates the mist-enshrouded, mountain-top mystique, whereas TruthRealization sounds natural, reasonable, and within reach. Spiritual Enlightenment is for the ultra-elite, but truth is everyone’s business. Q: How would Spiritual Autolysis work if someone (still unenlightened) went around saying that enlightenment is ‘abiding non-dual awareness’? Exactly, that’s the question. Calling it Abiding Non-Dual Awareness might be an adequate description from within, but is it useful from without? Is it useful for the seeker to know and call it by that name? And the answer is, I think, not very. In the book, I made an effort to convey the daily reality, even banality, of my experience. I wanted to hold myself up as an awakened being and say “Look, this is it. This is what it’s really like.” So the term Abiding Non-Dual Awareness serves that purpose, but it’s probably not the most illuminating term for the seeker. For the purposes of trying to achieve this state, I think the terms No-Self, TruthRealization, and Non-Duality are of more practical value.

Q: You mention that you enjoy books written by those who have attained enlightenment and who write well about what it’s like. Can you name a few authors? I’m going to sidestep this question in order to provide a more pertinent answer. The goal of the genuine seeker is always to take the next step, to open the next door. Waking up is not a scholastic pursuit or a conceptual challenge. The ability to open the next door is the only thing that matters, and the key can come in any package; a book, a stubbed toe, an advertising jingle, a leaf of grass. If your intent is in place, then the universe will act as your librarian and you’ll always have you what you need when you need it. Q: Some teachers like U.G. Krishnamurti posit that the individual can do nothing about becoming enlightened simply because it means the end of the individual selfsense. You are emphatic that it can happen through conscious intention, and that it should take no longer than two years after the first step has happened. How would you view U.G.’s view, (and Balsekar’s, whom you quote), because it brings up the old debate of destiny and free will in the pursuit of enlightenment? Firstly, the debate of destiny and free will is a non-issue; a dry hole. It is based on false assumptions and false knowledge. Through clear-seeing, rather than belief, any such question can be transcended/destroyed, and the whole matter left behind. It’s just another gate to get stuck behind for awhile and eventually pass beyond when you discover it was never really there. Obviously, no answer is possible. The trick is in seeing that the question too is not possible. Secondly, yes, I’m emphatic. Not only can it happen through conscious intention, it can only happen through conscious intention. To say that the individual can do nothing to break free of dualistic perception because it results in non-dualistic perception is nonsensical, like saying a living being can’t step off a cliff because it results in death, or that a dreamer can’t wake up because he’s dreaming. However, if U.G. Krishnamurti and others were saying that self cannot achieve noself, then that’s perfectly correct. The end of the one marks the beginning of the other. No one can have their cake and eat it too, despite what so many egotists and profiteers would have us believe.

Is it a paradox? Yes. Can it be explained so people will understand? No. Can people come see for themselves and understand it directly? Yes. How? Claw, scratch, bite, and burn. Burn everything. Think for yourself and figure out what’s true. You figure out what’s true through a process of elimination, by figuring out what’s not true. That’s the master key; follow the truth. Ultimately, that’s my only advice. The clock is ticking and you’re completely on your own. Forget concepts, forget philosophy, forget spirituality, forget what anyone else says, don’t try to dictate terms. Just think for yourself and figure out what’s true. You can do it. * * * Impersonating Jed McKenna But with the clear certitude of the self’s disappearance, there automatically arose the question of what had fallen away—what was the self? What, exactly had it been? Then too, there was the all-important question: what remained in its absence? Bernadette Roberts No man is a prophet in his own country. That line keeps running through my mind as I sit over lunch with my sister who I haven’t seen in several years. These days I’m the enlightened guy, but to her I’m just the bratty kid who couldn’t make eye contact when she wore a bikini. It’s summer ‘01 and we’re having lunch in lower Manhattan. She read a preview copy of Damnedest and has had a few months to digest it. It was very nice of her to read it because it’s really not her kind of thing. She’s a good citizen; a successful executive, wife, mother, Republican, tennis nut, Christian-ish, and all-round productive member of society. (She once told me she was raising her children to be productive members of society and I winced so hard I almost chipped a tooth.) She’s a wonderful person, but not a member of the demographic the book speaks to.

There’s a plate of chilled pasta in front of me and a salad in front of her. We’re both drinking iced tea. She’s runs the creative side of a medium-sized ad agency and, I have no doubt, she’s very good at it. She’s taking time out of her very hectic schedule to have lunch with me. After this, I’m going to the park to lay in the grass and watch people play with their dogs. Visiting your sister and having lunch shouldn’t be a confusing ordeal, but it is. Is she really my sister? What does that mean? We share some history and acquaintances, such as childhood and parents. Are my parents really my parents? Genetically they are related to my body, but the person who lived my childhood is no longer here. The past I share with this person is about as real and important to me as if I’d read it in a brochure. The problem is that these people, my family, are all related to my shell, and I’m not. They’re looking at the outer Jed McKenna and assuming an inner Jed McKenna. I’m inside Jed McKenna looking out and I can’t really remember what he’s supposed to do or say. It’s all fakery. I’m an actor playing a role for which I feel no connection and have no motivation. There cannot be anything genuine in my dealings with people who are dealing with my outer garment. (The whole thing is further entangled by the fact that there’s no “I” inhabiting my shell, just a fading echo, but let’s not go down that road just now.) Actually, it’s not really confusing. I possess not the least shred of doubt about who and what I am. The tricky thing is that who and what I am is not related to this pretty, professional, salad-eating woman across from me. By coming to this lunch I have inserted myself into a situation where I do not belong. I am an imposter. I have some residual fondness for my sister and if she died I’d be saddened to think that she was no longer in the world, but the simple fact is that our former relationship no longer exists. Okay, so why am I telling you this? Because that’s what I do. I try to hold this enlightenment thing up for display and this seems like an interesting aspect of the whole deal. How do you relate to the people who were most important to you before awakening from the dream of the segregated self? She asks why I’m in town.

“My astrologers told me it was a good time to get away and not try to accomplish anything. They said that ketu and rahu wouldn’t be letting me get anything done for awhile anyway—” I look up and see that she has stopped chewing in mid-mouthful and is staring at me incredulously. “What?” “My astrologers—” “You’re not serious. You have astrologers?” Oh yeah, I guess that sounds weird. I was vaguely aware that I was trying to be funny by starting a sentence with “My astrologers told me—” but what’s a little amusing to me is other-worldly to her. Might as well have fun with it. “I have dozens of astrologers. I can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone who’s doing my chart or explaining how my future will unfold; advising me on pretty much everything.” Her expression doesn’t change. “You have astrologers?” “Lots. Gotta beat ‘em off with a stick.” “And they tell you… they tell you what the future holds? What you should do? When you should do it? What you should avoid? Is that what we’re talking about?” “I suppose.” She resumes chewing but the wide-eyed gaze remains. There’s a chasm in this conversation across which there’s no point trying to communicate. She knows I’m into some serious weirdness, but not how much or what kind. I don’t really have astrologers, of course, but in those days it did seem like I was surrounded by students of Eastern and Western astrology who were always very eager to share their readings. “What do you do with all that information?”

“Me? Nothing. I mean, I don’t ask for it. It’s not like I wake up and summon the court astrologers to plan my day.” “It sounds like you do.” “I was speaking lightly.” I’m trying to skip playfully along the surface of this conversation. I don’t want to sink down into the kind of answer I’d give a serious student. The truth is that I don’t possess any mechanism that would allow me to be curious or concerned about the future, but saying that doesn’t make for breezy conversation. “Jesus,” she says, shaking her head. “My little brother has his own astrologers.” “Well, they’re not really mine. They’re just in attendance, so to speak.” I’m used to conversing with people who aren’t awake and aren’t happy about it. Everything else is chit-chat; talking for the sake of talking, reinforcing the illusion of self. I’m not against it, I just don’t care to participate in it. “So, you obviously have a great deal of influence over your students,” she says as she sips her iced tea. I mull her statement over and decide that I don’t have a response. I take another bite of pasta, wishing I’d ordered something with meat. “I mean,” she says, “they obviously hold you in very high regard. That’s quite a responsibility.” She thinks, quite understandably, that she’s my big sister and we’re having a nice little catch-up lunch. She’s been thrown a curve with this little-brother/spiritualmaster thing and she’s trying to handle it. Does she think I’m a fraud? Does she think I’m running a game? Does she think that underneath it all I’m still really her little brother? I don’t know and I don’t much care. The fact that she’s read Damnedest doesn’t mean that she and I can speak; it means she should know we can’t. She doesn’t seem to be clear on that. Maybe she thinks the enlightenment thing is just my day job and that I can step out of that role to be with someone who knows the real me. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s a responsibility.”

“You don’t know? Obviously these people are strongly influenced by you. You don’t think that’s a big responsibility?” I shrug. The first thing she said to me when we got together was that I wasn’t dressed well enough for the restaurant. Such a statement is so alien to me that I could only shrug. Now it seems that every statement she makes is so alien to me that I can only shrug. In accepting this lunch engagement, my hope was that I could slip back into my old persona enough to manage a civil meal. That was too hopeful. I can no longer impersonate myself and I am simply unable to formulate a reply to anything she has to say; I’ve forgotten my lines. We don’t share a common tongue and there’s no way I can make her see that. From her point of view she’s saying perfectly normal, conversational things. “Yes, I suppose it’s a big responsibility,” I say, trying to say something that sounds like I’m saying something. She lowers her voice. “You hear a lot about people in your position taking advantage of that responsibility for,” she lowers her voice, “unsavory purposes. I hope you would never do something like that.” I could simply tell her what the preview copy of the book was meant to tell her, that we are no longer related because what I am now doesn’t relate. But why say it? To satisfy myself? It wouldn’t. To inform her? It wouldn’t. “You mean sex stuff? That sort of thing?” “Whatever. Power corrupts. I just hope you’ll be careful.” Sweet. Big sister giving little brother some advice on how to shoulder the burden of power. Being in advertising, perhaps she thinks we have something in common; wielding the power to influence people’s thoughts. Maybe she thinks we’re in the same business, I don’t know. I set down my fork and sit back. “Well, when I walk through the house, I always have someone proceed me with a boom-box playing Darth Vader theme music to lend a weighty and ominous air to my approach. And I certainly don’t dress like this. I have, you know, the robes, the beads, and I always carry fresh flowers. Just trappings, all very tiresome, really, but the underlings expect it. There was a little

resistance at first to having them call me Shri Shri Shri Shri Jed, but they got the hang of it. And remembering to speak in the first person plural there and singular here can take a little getting used to, but we are—I mean, uh, I am—happy to make the effort. Noblesse oblige and all.” She stares at me for a long moment, then bursts into laughter. I guess some ice has broken because we are able to continue in a lighter and friendlier manner, and eventually say goodbye with genuine fondness. I doubt I’ll ever see her again, but I’m happy knowing she’s still in the world. * * * Blues for Buddha Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 1 Corinthians 13 Being critical of Buddhism isn’t easy. Buddhism is the most likable of the major religions, and Buddhists are the perennial good guys of modern spirituality. Beautiful traditions, lovely architecture, inspiring statuary, ancient history, the Dalai Lama; what’s not to like?

Everything about Buddhism is just so—nice. No fatwahs or jihads, no inquisitions or crusades, no terrorists or pederasts, just nice people being nice. In fact, Buddhism means niceness. Nice-ism. At least, it should. Buddha means Awakened One, so Buddhism can be taken to mean Awake-ism. Awakism. It would therefore be natural to think that if you were looking to wake up, then Buddhism, i.e., Awakism, would be the place to look. The Light is Better Over Here Such thinking, however, would reveal a dangerous lack of respect for the opposition. Maya, goddess of delusion, has been doing her job with supreme mastery since the first spark of self-awareness flickered in some monkey’s brainbox, and the idea that the neophyte truth-seeker can just sign up with the Buddhists, read some books, embrace some new concepts and slam her to the mat would be a bit on the naive side, (as billions of sincere but unsuccessful seekers over the last twenty-five centuries might grudgingly attest). On the other hand, why not? How’d this get so turned around? It’s just truth. Shouldn’t truth be, like, the simplest thing? Shouldn’t someone who wants to find something as ubiquitous and unchanging as truth be able to do so? How can anyone manage to not find truth? And here’s this venerable organization supposedly dedicated to just that very thing, even named for it, and it’s a total flop. So what’s the problem? Why doesn’t Buddhism produce Buddhas? The problem arises from the fact that Buddhists, like everyone else, insist on reconciling the irreconcilable. They don’t just want to awaken to the true, they also want to make sense of the untrue. They want to have their cake and eat it too, so they end up with nonsensical theories, divergent schools, sagacious doubletalk, and zero Buddhas. Typical of their insistence on reconciling the irreconcilable is the Buddhist concept of Two Truths, a poignant two-word joke they don’t seem to get, and yet this sort of

perversely irrational thinking is near the very heart of the failed search for truth. We don’t want truth, we want a particular truth; one that doesn’t threaten ego; one that doesn’t exist. We insist on a truth that makes sense given what we know, not knowing that we know nothing. Nothing about Buddhism is more revealing than the Four Noble Truths which, not being true, are of dubious nobility. They form the basis of Buddhism, so it’s clear from the outset that the Buddhists have whipped up a proprietary version of truth shaped more by market forces than any particular concern for the less consumerfriendly, albeit true, truth. Buddhism may be spiritually filling, even nourishing, but insofar as truth is concerned, it’s just the same old junkfood in a different package. You can eat it every day of your life and die exactly as awakened as the day you signed up. Bait & Switch Buddhism is a classic bait-and-switch operation. We’re attracted by the enlightenment in the window, but as soon as we’re in the door they start steering us over to the compassion aisle. Buddhists could be honest and change their name to Compassionism, but who wants that? There’s the rub. They can’t get us in the door with compassion, and they can’t deliver on the promise of enlightenment. It’s not limited to compassion, of course. Their shelves are stocked with all sorts of goodies and enticements, practically anything anyone could ever want, with just the one rather notable exception. If they had just stopped when they had Anicca, impermanence, and Anatta, no-self, then they would have had a true and effective teaching they could be proud of, except there would be no they because Buddhism would have died with the Buddha. They’d have a good product, but no customers. This untruth-in-advertising is the kind of game you have to play if you want to stay successful in a business where the customer is always wrong. You can either go out of business honestly, or thrive by giving the people what they want. What they say they want and what they really want, though, are two very different things.

Me Me Me To the outside observer, much of Buddhist knowledge and practice seems focused on spiritual self-improvement. This, too, is hard to speak against, except within the context of awakening from delusion. Then it’s easy. There is no such thing as true self, so any pursuit geared toward its aggrandizement, betterment, upliftment, elevation, evolution, glorification, salvation, etc, is utter folly. How much more so any endeavor undertaken merely to increase one’s own happiness or contentment or, I’m embarrassed just to say it, bliss? Self is ego and ego resides exclusively in the dreamstate. If you want to break free of the dreamstate, you must break free of self, not stroke it to make it purr or groom it for some imagined brighter future. Maya’s House of Enlightenment The trick with being critical of so esteemed and beloved an institution is not to get dragged down into the morass of details and debate. It’s very simple: If Buddhism is about awakening, people should be waking up. If it’s not about awakening, they should change the name. Of course, Buddhism isn’t completely unique in resorting to shoddy marketing tactics. This same gulf between promise and performance is found in all systems of human spirituality. We’re looking at it in Buddhism because that’s where it’s most pronounced. No disrespect to the Buddha is intended. If there was a Buddha and he was enlightened, then it’s Buddhism that insults his memory, not healthy skepticism. Blame the naked emperor’s retinue of lackeys and lickspittles, not the unbeguiled lad who merely states the obvious. Buddhism is arguably the most elevated of man’s great belief systems. If you want to enjoy the many valuable benefits it has to offer, then I wouldn’t presume to utter a syllable against it. But, if you want to escape from the clutches of Maya, then I suggest you take a closer look at the serene face on all those golden statues, and see if it isn’t really hers. * * *

Bonus Content from

Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment * * * Jed McKenna Interview Q: Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment starts out strangely. First, with the Call me Ahab line in the first chapter, then the next two chapters which are a little unsettling, almost alienating. What was the thinking there? I have a lot of notes and I write a lot of stuff that doesn’t get into the books. Usually, as a book takes shape, as with any creative process, the stuff that doesn’t belong gets weeded out. That’s what I thought might happen with some or all of those first three chapters, especially the second and third, the California chapters. I was a little surprised they stayed in. Q: But it’s you that left them in. Yes and no. I’m a participant in the creation of these books but I’m also very much an observer. I receive clear direction and I follow it, whether it’s writing books or anything else. I move with the tides on an ocean where the difference between self and other becomes merely theoretical. Even in the dreamstate my character is almost fully dissolved back into the ocean so, for instance, an outside observer might say that Jed McKenna wrote these books, but from my perspective there is no such distinction. Distinctions are a dreamstate phenomenon and even though I exist and write in the dreamstate to publish dreamed up books for a dreamed up readership, I don’t see things as being distinguished from one another the way I did before awakening. This is about segregation and integration, about seeing things as apart where there is no apartness. This integration, re-integration, is the state toward which everyone is in constant motion; away from false segregation back to oneness. This constant motion resembles a degrading orbit; round and round, closer and closer, gripped by invisible forces ceaselessly pulling us in, back to our own centers, the one center of all. It is this gravity emanating from the exact center of self that powers the returning motion of the Tao. Everyone is in this orbit. Life is in this orbit. The First Step, on the other hand, is the abrupt course change out of this orbit into a straightline approach. Until the First Step we’re still in orbit. After the First Step, life in orbit is over and collision is imminent.

Q: Collision with the planet? So it appears. From space the planet might look like God, or Truth, or True Self, something like that depending on the eye of the beholder, but the destination is always the same; the one source, the gravity well that reaches out from the center of the planet and pulls us all in. Prior to the First Step, one maintains a gradually accelerating slow-approach orbit. After the First Step, one shoots like a missile straight at the planet’s center, heedless of consequences, only to discover at the moment of impact that there’s really no planet, no gravity, no self, no nuthin’. No one can explain this in a way that makes any sense so the answer I give when asked is come see for yourself. Break out of orbit. Don’t worry about getting to the planet, a decaying orbit will get you there sooner or later. Everyone wants to wake up by hastening or altering their orbit and, as the results clearly indicate, it doesn’t seem to make any difference. There’s only one way; you have to break out of orbit. That’s the First Step and that must be the goal of the person in orbit, not spiritual enlightenment or Nirvana or any of that. Yes, it’s a suicide run. There is no return, no turning back. There will be nothing to come back to. If you’re into the whole happily-ever-after thing, stay in orbit and think in terms of karma and dharma and countless lifetimes in which to follow the homeward trek. If you’ve had enough of that then it’s time to switch your attention away from all the spiritual gibberish and start thinking about breaking out of orbit for a suicide run. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Q: A significant part of your audience lives in California. It was almost painful to hear you say you hate LA and that part of the reason for that is probably Californians. Yeah. I swing back to comment on that later in the book. I’m an East Coast guy bad-mouthing the West Coast is all. I lived in Montecito and further north for a time and liked it well enough, the East just seems more real to me. All I can think about when I’m in Southern California is getting out, but it’s only a personal preference. I still have preferences and I wanted to accentuate that apparent paradox. If there’s ever a third book there might not be too much in the way of my personal preferences, or the few that are left might come out very strongly and specifically. To me, Southern California feels like the Mecca of Ego. A strong distaste for ego is really the last of my strongly held preferences and it’s not likely to disappear. This is the ongoing minimalization of self I talked about in Damnedest. I’m kind of chronicling the second decade of the awakened being as I live it. I can forecast

trends, but then I have to live them too. I said I’d become less tolerant and I am. The tattered remnants of self hang loosely from me. I almost have to clutch at them to have any presence at all. Q: You make it sound like the awakening process continues even now. In a way. The awakening part was a very distinct event, like a nuclear explosion, and occurred for me many years ago. The post-awakening process taking place since then is like the protracted effects of radiation poisoning. Your nose doesn’t fall of in the first instant, it stays on for awhile. You know it’s not going to stay on for long so you enjoy it while you can. You know what’s coming, you know it’s inevitable; you don’t fear it or seek to avoid it. On the other hand, you’re fond of your nose. I have a fondness for my nose so maybe I staple it on or use a little duct tape so I can keep it a little longer. I’m not making an argument for this or defending a position, I’m just sharing my observations of the process. The awakening is complete, perfect, and irreversible, but no outer representation can reflect the inner state. At any moment since the point of awakening I can and have shaken myself like a wet dog to cast off all the rags of self; the tatters of costume. Q: So you can throw off self and put it back on? Such as it is. It’s in an advanced state of decay and I can’t stop or reverse that, but I can try to squeeze some further use out of what remains. I suppose I’ll be able to fake my own personhood for as long as I live, but the veneer is getting pretty thin. Q: It’s only in interacting with people, with ego, that this is a problem? Yes. I have no other reason to slip into character. It’s not really much of a problem, though. Not interacting with people is no great hardship for me. Q: And it’s not theoretical, right? You’re not speculating, you’re describing your actual experience? Yes. My experience is that of a non-egoic being who can wrap himself in a threadbare ego when necessary. Q: And you don’t see the paradox? The whole selfless self thing? I’ll address this by saying that the enlightened state is not, as is commonly supposed, the special state. The unenlightened state is the

magical, mysterious, incomprehensible state. Awake is just awake. It’s not something more, it’s everything less. My state is natural and easy. I carry no baggage. I labor under no delusion. I don’t spend my lifeforce animating a fictional persona. All paradox lies with the unawakened state. The awakened don’t have something that the unawakened are missing, it’s the other way around. The unawakened possess massive structures of false belief. They create and maintain these vast realms of past, present and future; of great meaning and importance; of a deep and wide emotional range; all woven together out of sheer nothingness. Something from nothing; that’s the magic, that’s the special state. The unawakened state is the one that requires such ceaseless dedication and devotion and which seems so fantastically improbable. The awakened state is nothing compared to that. Q: That doesn’t sound so good. I never said it was. Q: Are you saying it’s not? No. The lifeforce I’m not using to project a false self is now available for much more fun and interesting purposes. It’s a whole different universe once all that petty self crap has been left behind. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Q: So, back to the first unsettling chapters— Unsettling is the right way to think of it. That probably reflects the higher intention at work. I look at those first few chapters like an establishing shot in film, providing the viewer with an overview of where events are taking place. The first chapter, Loomings, which is the title of the first chapter in Moby-Dick, is like striking a gong to wake everyone up and let them know that the show has started and that it’s a little weird; that something different is going on. Then the two California chapters continue this sort of destabilizing weirdness. The single question underlying the California chapters is stated in chapter two: “Sure, you all meditate and do whatever spiritual practices, but you know that’s not really going anywhere, right?” That’s an unsettling question. Anyone reading the book should be taken up short by that; put themselves at that dinner table and look at their own Operation Fizzle and ask themselves serious questions about what they’re really doing with all this spirituality stuff.

Q: So you were intentionally offensive? Part of the intent might have been to start out with a challenge. Suicide, Nazis, catshit, teen angst. Is it funny or offensive? Good spirited or mean? Is Jed arrogant or something else? Do I like him? What does it mean if I don’t? Upon whom would that really reflect? Q: Can an enlightened person behave this way? Right, can this guy be enlightened if he acts this way? Talks this way? Sticks this semi-belligerent stuff in the front of his book? Where’s the unconditional love? Where’s the compassionate heart? Or, wait, maybe it’s my preconceived notions about spirituality and enlightenment that are screwy. Maybe I have to go back and think about what it would really be like to be an enlightened person in an unenlightened world. Maybe I’ve been sold a bill of goods. Maybe it’s the sweetness and light version that doesn’t make sense. And yet, in the second book I would hope that the reader has read the first book and has some theoretical idea of what enlightenment—truth-realization, abiding nondual awareness—really means. The second book seems like more fun to me if you approach it from the perspective of having granted that Jed McKenna is an awakened being. We’ve already established that in the first book, so that should free us up to explore, to see what it’s all about, what it’s like to be in this state, to ask better questions; not, Is this guy enlightened?, but, What does it mean that an enlightened being acts this way? What am I being shown about the awakened state? I don’t want to make this all sound too carefully thought out because the books really fall into place on their own. This is just my interpretation for how it is and my reasons for not changing it. Q: You’re interpreting your own book just like a reader would? Something like that. Those were the first three chapters since the first draft and they never moved. I looked at them many times, wondering if it wasn’t a bit much, and finally realized that in a book called Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, a bit much was probably about right. Also, I trust the thing that put them there more than I trust the thing in me that wanted to change them. And really, why not put it right up front? The book is called Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, but what does that mean? It means that getting there and being there

isn’t what we’ve been told. You look at modern spirituality and all you see is the same tired drivel being endlessly recycled; love, compassion, no-mind, higher self, levels of consciousness and so on. A noxious muck in which, as is amply borne out by results, no clarity or progress is possible. There is no greater failure in the history of mankind than the spiritual quest, the search for truth, and yet everyone continues just as everyone always has, using the same maps and directions, the same guides and the same routes. It’s nuts. Sooner or later you have to come to the point of saying, “Hey, wait a minute, this is crazy. I want to get off this merry-go-round and get moving. How do I break free from this cycle of bumper-sticker platitudes and actually take some responsibility for my life?” If you’re reading books by Jed McKenna, that’s what you’re playing at the edge of; self-determination. Not because it’s of any importance, or to please anyone, or to line up a cozy afterlife, but simply because it’s honest. Ultimately, that’s all we’re talking about; living an honest life. Being honest. Q: So what’s the solution? How do we break free? Look at Hercules in the Augean stables. He could have picked up a shovel and spent his entire life shoveling shit, never making any progress because they’re always making it faster than anyone can shovel it. What does he do instead? He reroutes a river so it flows through the stables and with this one act all the muck is washed away once and for all. That’s the solution; don’t try to do battle with confusion and mediocrity. The solution to a problem does not exist at the level of the problem. Rise above the level at which confusion and mediocrity exist. Think for yourself. Look for yourself. See the big picture. Life is a one-man show. Turn up the houselights and see for yourself, directly, without the obstruction and distorting filters of interpreters or middlemen. What could be simpler? Q: You’re saying that people should— I have no opinion about what anyone should or shouldn’t do. Some people like the smell of manure. In the context of this discussion, most people do. It’s warm and familiar and safe. When it starts smelling like shit, like stagnation and death, like a dark, fetid dungeon, then you start wanting to do something to get away from it. When that happens, then you’re starting to leave all the swami wannabes behind and represent your own interests. At that point I can provide some simple guidance: Open your eyes. Look. See why it smells so bad. Nourish your discontent. Cultivate negative self-esteem. Elevate self-loathing to a spiritual practice. Proceed on the hypothesis that everything you are is a lie and everything you know is wrong and try to disprove it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Q: Do you think there’ll be a third book? Maybe. I seem to enjoy the writing so I guess I’m not done with it. There are several things in the works; maybe something will actually materialize. Q: Do you think there might be more surprises like with Moby-Dick? I don’t know. I certainly didn’t see the white whale coming until it was right on top of me. Q: Besides the revelations about Moby-Dick, the other very surprising thing about SIE is that you steer readers away from enlightenment and toward the state you call Human Adulthood. Human Adulthood is the real prize. Anyone who is involved in spiritual pursuits is actually pursuing Human Adulthood but probably doesn’t know it. The point I wanted to make is that Human Adulthood is what everyone really wants and not many people really have. The child has to die for the adult to be born and this very seldom happens. It’s a cataclysmic, death/rebirth event. Once born into this adulthood, all of life becomes about growth and discovery. The universe is the playground of the Human Adult. So anyway, that was a major theme in Incorrect because that’s what it’s really all about. Religion and spirituality are all about not going anywhere. Enlightenment is all about going and never stopping. Human Adulthood is all about wandering and exploring and playing. It’s about living life and fulfilling potential and expanding without limits. All the good things that can be said about enlightenment and religion and spirituality are the natural qualities of Human Adulthood; manifestation of desires, flow and effortless functioning, positive emotions that are not fear-based such as awe and gratitude and agape, which reflects an understanding of the connectedness of things. This is obviously what everyone really wants, not truth-realization, so that’s what I tried to talk about. Q: You must have an intense sense of satisfaction at having created such superb books, but the real reason I bring it up is that I suspect you don’t. You’re right, I don’t. I don’t have that sort of relationship to the books. No sense of pride or ownership, no self-congratulatory feeling of accomplishment. In trying to answer this question I’m struggling just to think of what type of feeling or

attachment an author might have for his works. In any event, the books are fine, that’s all. I was designed to write them and I did. They’re adequate. I am satisfied that I have done well and there’s nothing more to it. I have played my part adequately. Q: Adequately, meaning that you could have done better? Meaning I could have done worse. I’ve been pretty good about allowing the process to work. The books are as they should be. Q: Are you totally beyond compliment or insult? I don’t know about beyond, that might be misleading. I no longer possess the aspect of self that can be praised or insulted. There is no place for death to enter, that kind of thing. I don’t think of myself as a writer or teacher or anything else. I just did what was indicated. If it remains indicated, I’ll do it some more. If not, I won’t. I really wouldn’t mind just being done with the whole spirituality thing. It bears repeating that I’m not a spiritual person. If it weren’t for the writing I’d have no further connection to it at all. Q: It’s strange to think of a spiritual master, teacher and author as being unspiritual or aspiritual. It must be strange for you to write for this audience. Sure, now extend that a bit and imagine my situation in trying to continue to perform this communicator role. The fact is that I have almost no memory of the pre-awakened state. This isn’t a fuzzy feeling-level sort of thing, it’s a quite specific and pronounced gap between my paradigm and the unawakened paradigm, and it keeps getting wider as my memories of my own life in the other paradigm fade. Q: That must be very challenging. Only where ego is concerned. It wouldn’t matter to me at all except for the writing. To write books I have to speak across that chasm and it’s getting impossibly wide. Q: So it makes writing the books a challenge because— Because empathy is nearly gone. I have practically no memory of what it means to believe anything. Most people reading this would probably see someone who believes in televangelist faith healers and supermarket tabloids the same way that I see everyone. From my perspective, all beliefs are nonsensical. I can no longer draw

any real distinction between the merits of one and another. They’re all equal because they’re all untrue. People reading this probably look at people who send their retirement money to TV preachers and wonder how they can be so gullible, but from my perspective, everyone is that gullible. I no longer see any difference between any two people’s beliefs; I no longer can. There is no better or worse belief, no more or less true. They’re all dreamstate apparitions that have no reality or solidity outside of the dream. I can make out no distinction other than that. And yet, I seem to have this task of trying to communicate across this ever-widening divide, to connect with minds that don’t see this gulf or really believe it’s there. That’s the thing that’s happening; the gulf is getting wider. The idea that the Holy Roman Church is somehow better or truer or more valid than a suicide cult is lost on me. I am no longer capable of perceiving or pretending to perceive such distinctions. I know that one has more adherents than the other but that doesn’t mean anything. From my perspective, a person is either in the process of waking up or they’re not. That’s the only distinction I see clearly anymore. One is either confronting reality or denying it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Q: A lot of people who have met you through the books are eager to meet you in person. We’ve seen some pretty interesting offers of what people would give or do to be with you, even for a short while. That’s not indicated. Q: You sound like a robot at times. Even to myself, but the fact remains that I am designed to do what I’ve done, write, but I am not designed to fulfill a public role. Q: Designed? Designed, destined, dharmically-inclined, whatever. I enjoy writing, but I don’t enjoy people, which is to say, ego. This aversion to ego seems perfectly normal to me. I don’t think it’s at all strange, so it’s not likely to change. In fact, I’d encourage everyone to develop a similar aversion. There’s only one false, petty, fearful, dishonest thing in the universe and it’s ego; the false self. I think anyone who really comes to know it will come to be repulsed by it and that’s certainly moving in the direction of waking up.

In any case, I’m a private person and I have nothing to say that isn’t in the books. I made that point in this book. There’s simply not that much to say and I’ve said it all. I can continue to write, to expand on themes, go deeper into some topics, but that’s about it. Anyone who wants to track me down, ask me questions, benefit from whatever they think I can offer, is operating purely from denial. It’s easy to convince yourself otherwise, that seeking out a direct relationship with some whoop-de-doo spiritual fella is the mark of deep commitment, but it’s Maya who’s doing the convincing. What would I possibly have to say to someone? We’ve already determined to a reasonable certainty that there are no valid questions left unanswered by the books, so what would I do, cite page numbers? If someone comes up to me now seeking whatever, all I could tell them is, “Maya sent you. It’s her hand up your ass, turning your head, moving your lips. You have serious work to do and the only reason you came here was to avoid it.” If people don’t want to be serious about this they don’t have to be, that’s entirely their business, but from the very outset of this publishing project I was determined that I would not allow myself to be drawn into people’s avoidance games. Everyone wants to talk about it, but there’s nothing to say. It’s easy to take a trip, pay some money, give up some comforts, prostrate yourself at someone’s feet, obey, adore, exalt, whatever, and think that translates into something positive, some sort of forward motion, but these are all the acts of an ego seeking to divert attention away from the real issue with busywork and empty gestures; false acts of surrender allowing us to convince ourselves that we’re striding boldly into the light while staying safely huddled in shadow. No one needs me for that. Anyone with a genuine desire to face the issue of self already has all I can offer. Use the process of Spiritual Autolysis and try to figure out what’s true. Everything else is about being turned away. Q: You make it sound so simple, but in reality it’s the most difficult thing anyone can ever do. Well, there’s the critical point. It’s not a matter of awakening, it’s a matter of getting to the First Step. Once you’ve taken the First Step, everything else follows from there. Until you’ve taken the First Step, it’s all academic. The First Step is the true starting point of this whole process. Everything else is about taking or not taking the First Step. To get to the First Step, to cross that starting line, you have to cultivate an understanding and appreciation of the forces you’re up against; of Maya, of ego, of the nature of self-delusion, of fear, or else no amount of dedication or commitment will avail in the least. If you’re all mind and no heart you can only run in circles. If you’re all heart and no mind you can only dig yourself into a deeper

hole. Until you cross the real starting line, take the First Step, it’s all just a hobby like golf or stamp collecting. Spirituality itself is just another tool of denial, the most effective of them all, and that’s why the search for truth is the greatest failure in the history of man. Here’s a simple test. If it’s soothing or comforting, if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy; if it’s about getting into pleasant emotional or mental states; if it’s about peace, love, tranquility, silence or bliss; if it’s about a brighter future or a better tomorrow; if it makes you feel good about yourself or boosts your self-esteem, tells you you’re okay, tells you everything’s just fine the way it is; if it offers to improve, benefit or elevate you, or if it suggests that someone else is better or above you; if it’s about belief or faith or worship; if it raises or alters consciousness; if it combats stress or deepens relaxation, or if it’s therapeutic or healing, or if it promises happiness or relief from unhappiness, if it’s about any of these or similar things, then it’s not about waking up. Then it’s about living in the dreamstate, not smashing out of it. On the other hand, if it feels like you’re being skinned alive, if it feels like a prolonged evisceration, if you feel your identity unraveling, if it twists you up physically and drains your health and derails your life, if you feel love dying inside you, if it seems like death would be better, then it’s probably the process of awakening. * * * Zen and the Art of Self-Mutilation This is adapted from a letter Jed McKenna wrote in reply to a self-professed “serious seeker” who made an impassioned offer to turn over his belongings and himself in exchange for being accepted as Jed’s student. Dear William, You don’t need to add me to your equation, you need to subtract yourself. Begin by re-examining your assumptions. It’s clear from your letter that you consider yourself a serious person, a serious seeker. That’s the first assumption you’ll want to challenge. You’re sure that a serious seeker is what you are and you think I see you

that way too, but this is not the case. I know serious when I see it and I know a handpuppet of Maya when I see it. You think you’re on top of something, but the only thing to be on top of is Maya, and she’s on top of you like a house on a mouse. I receive many offers from people who want to come be with me. Maybe anyone perceived as a spiritual solution-provider receives this kind of offer, I wouldn’t know. People want to give up everything; their stuff, their money, their very lives, really. They don’t know what to do with them so I guess they figure, why not dump them on someone who seems more qualified, like a mother leaving her baby on the rich man’s doorstep. This may appear to be the ultimate sacrifice, a grand act of selflessness, but it’s really the ultimate entrenchment; fear gone haywire, ego solidifying its hold for decades to come. This isn’t how you surrender the self, this is how you abandon it; abdicate responsibility for your own life. I understand this can be a very tempting response to a very perplexing challenge. Nevertheless, your gesture suggests that you’re in an uncomfortable place. Good for you. That’s always the best place to be. Being so uncomfortable means you’ll soon have to move. That’s good. That’s the motivation that drives the journey of awakening. It’s a series of steps, none taken voluntarily, all necessitated by the kind of discomfort that caused you to write your letter to me. The motivation behind your letter is good, but throwing yourself at me is not a solution. What would I do with you? What possible instruction could I give? Maybe I would tell you to cut off one ounce of your body every day until you can answer the question, “What is true?” Any ounce as long as it’s an ounce. That should bring you quickly into focus; light a fire under you. If you had to do this, cut off an ounce of your body every day, how much time do you think you would waste on meditation? On attending satsang or reading the latest spiritual bestseller? Not bloody much. You would soon become an enlightenment machine. Sleep and food would be reduced to barest minimums. Relationships and activities once deemed essential would be forgotten. You would enter into a burning mania of singlepointedness. Soon, anything other than the question What is true? would seem comically irrelevant. There’s your new-Zen; Zen for the new millennium. It would be interesting to see how many sand gardens and books of pithy aphorisms the selfmutilation approach sells. What is true? That’s the only koan there is; the only one anyone ever needs. Every day you don’t answer this question, another ounce. Take a moment to think about what it would mean to have to sit down with a scalpel at a certain time every day and amputate an ounce of your body. You would quickly have to learn things about

asking and answering, about how the process works and doesn’t work, about how to help it and how to get out of its way. You would have to learn how to unlearn, and you would need access to a tremendous amount of resources in order to accomplish such an unlearning. You would discard clever spiritual concepts for cold facts, pretty Eastern vocabulary for words of scientific precision. The process is one of seeing clearly, not just blindly lashing out. That act of seeing clearly takes time and resources and the mind must work almost ceaselessly at levels far beyond the everyday. Would this work? Well, let’s say it did. Say it worked in 500 days. There you are after hacking off over 30 pounds of yourself, and now you’re truth-realized. Now you know directly, for yourself, without the slightest possibility of error, the truth. You are free from delusion; awakened from the dreamstate. You have joined the ranks of the spiritually enlightened. You look at your toeless feet, fingerless hands, noseless face, earless head, and what would you say? Here’s what you’d say: “Well, uh, that was kinda dumb.” I’m happy to tell you that right up front. Waking up is kinda dumb. There’s no point. It’s not merely pointless, it’s pointlessness. Who would do such a thing? Only someone who absolutely couldn’t not do it. Once you become the person who can’t not do it, it’s a whole different thing, but trying to do it before you absolutely must is as ludicrous as slicing off parts of your body. (Which, by the way, don’t do.) As barbaric and unthinkable as this ounce-a-day approach may seem, I can assure you that anyone who has ever managed to awaken from the dreamstate was driven by equally unendurable mental and emotional forces, something to consider the next time you hear the pop guru de jour recount the moment of his glorious epiphany: “I was walking in the park, children were laughing, birds were singing, when all of a sudden...” This is where the process of Spiritual Autolysis comes in. Spiritual Autolysis is ultimately about clear seeing; clearly seeing what is, which is what we do when we stop seeing what’s not. We can use SA to raise the ordinary powers of the mind up to the extraordinary levels necessary in order to see life and the world and ourselves as they truly are. Many people can build nuclear reactors, compose symphonies, conquer nations or perform brain surgery, but very few can see what is. You mention in your letter that Alan Watts said that we are the apertures through which the universe sees and experiences itself. It might be more useful to say we are

the imperfect lenses through which the universe, or the I-universe, observes itself; through which the undifferentiated creates the illusion of differentiation. It’s an amusing idea to play with. Self is distortion: distortion by design. The exact distortion of the lens is what makes the exact individual; distortion itself is self. All personal attributes, understood this way, are flaws; imperfections in a lens that exists to be imperfect. Imperfection does not otherwise exist, so an artificial imperfection is created; ego. Seekers may strive to become a perfect lens but, of course, the perfect lens is no-lens; no imperfections, no lens, just what is. Your imperfections are not only who and what you are, but why you are. The finiteness and the imperfection of the lens are the reasons for the lens. No-lens means the universe goes unbeheld, so what has been accomplished by this act? Who is served? Who benefits? This reinforces my earlier statement that awakening is pointless— trading segregated self for integrated no-self, finite being for infinite non-being—all this by way of saying not that perfection is unattainable, but that it’s unavoidable. Perfection is. It is what is. There is no other. In truth, there is no such thing as nonperfect or imperfect. The point of finite and imperfect lenses is to create artificial realms of finiteness and imperfection in which to play. (The original letter cites an Indian saint to bolster an argument and then proceeds as if the words of the sage were accepted fact.) Don’t come at me brandishing dead guys like potent allies. It doesn’t help you. They can’t put up a fight. If you can’t make the argument, you can’t summon the dead to make it for you. That’s a logical fallacy called Ipse Dixit: “He himself said it.” In law, it’s called the dead man’s statute and it’s inadmissible. You can’t elect a ghost proxy. You’re borrowing authority from someone who is incontestable not by merit, but by death. Your argument is unassailable because the person making it is unavailable. You’re saying that if he were here, he could make the argument, but he’s not here. You can borrow words and ideas and quotations from the terminally absent to help illustrate a point, but if it’s your point, it’s your problem; your argument to make. In any case, if he were here, he couldn’t make the argument. I’m familiar with the beloved teacher of whom you speak. I promise you that if he were here I could slice him into a garnish while rubbing my tummy and patting my head. No effort required. No contest. You could do the same by this time tomorrow if you’d stop being lazy and start thinking for yourself. Your spirituality is just another false garment, another layer of the lie of self. Your spirituality defines the dimensions of your cell and the fact that you don’t see that

tells me that you have no idea where you are or whose rules you are living under. You have no grasp of your true situation, of the nature of your captive status. You’re clinging desperately to your lies; shielding them with emotional energy. Why? Because these lies are you. They are who you are. You don’t have imperfections, you are imperfections. Ask yourself why you even write to me? What’s the point? None of what I’m saying is new to you. And yet here you are, writing impassioned letters to me, trying to stand your lies back up on their feet. If you like your lies, fine, but you’re not going to make them true through the power of your conviction. Who you are is a lie; that’s a fact. You’re a fictional character in a state of wondrous denial. What you think of as your uniqueness is really nothing more than a series of randomly set toggle switches, and the particular settings you call “me” amount to nothing more special than the distinctions between any two snowflakes in an endless blizzard. A serious person must remember at all times where he is and who’s running the show. This is Maya’s house. She controls everything. She has every advantage. We are patients in Maya’s asylum, and all instruction to sit still and quiet the mind come directly from her. Stillness and silence are the antithesis of the awakening process, and those who advocate peace and compassion and a quiet mind are just reselling their preferred sleep potions. There are even popular spiritual teachers and authors who advocate doing nothing at all; they say that effort itself is the problem, that the discontentment that drives the spiritual pursuit is the only thing standing between ourselves and the goal of that pursuit. Is it any wonder that such a message would be popular? Is there any doubt from whom such a message really comes? You indicate in your letter that you believe a teacher’s lineage is important, so there’s the one true lineage; Maya. If you wish to understand any spiritual teacher’s lineage, you need only imagine him dangling from marionette lines of which he is unaware, spouting off about free will, the hand of Maya above, controlling everything. Even as you write to me and I write to you, we are dissolving in a vat of a corrosive chemical called oxygen. We are genetically programmed to self-destruct. Our lives are being swallowed by time and every inhalation may be the last. The inescapable fact is that we are all practitioners of the New Zen I described above. Every day we lose an ounce or a gram or a pound and someday, poof!, gone as if we never were. There’s only one koan and it’s the same for all of us: What is true? Yours, &tc

* * * Mannahatta I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city, Whereupon, lo! upsprang the aboriginal name! Walt Whitman, Mannahatta I like Manhattan too much to ever live there. The most I ever do is visit for a few months. That’s what I’m doing now. The time is summer ‘01. The Twin Towers still stand, but not for long. The first book, Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing, is written but not yet printed. I’d spent the last few months house and dog sitting in Puerto Rico. When I decided to go to the city, I called my sister who lives there and set up a lunch. As it happened, she said, she knew of a three month availability on a Tribeca loft if I needed a place. She told me that her friends who owned it were desperate to find a tenant because their arrangements through a house-swapping agency had fallen through at the last minute, but they were going on their trip anyway. “That’s fine,” I told her. “I’ll call Rodney and ask him to put it together.” “You don’t want to see it first?” she asks. “You’re saying it’s okay, right?” “Yes, but—” “So it’s fine. I’ll see you for lunch next week.” That’s a clear illustration of two widely disparate modes of operating in the world; the distrusting way of the segregated self and the trusting way of the integrated self. My sister would have had to inspect the apartment, haggle about price, maybe call in experts to inspect this and that, find alternatives to keep her options open, put

deposits in escrow and get a lawyer to sign off on the lease. She might refer to the owners as friends but, as she would say, business is business. This is the falsest of economies because the only thing she’s saving is money, while wasting her only true wealth, her lifeforce, with all that dreadful fear-based strategizing and maneuvering. It’s not really about money, of course, it’s about self-image. That’s not just how she’d lease an apartment, that’s how she does pretty much everything. She lives in a universe where a hundred bad things could happen in every situation. Her state is one of constant vigilance. She spends her life imagining everything that could go wrong and making sure that it doesn’t. To her, the universe is a hostile place in which, though she’d never phrase it this way, she does not belong and has no rights or power. And yet, most anyone would consider my sister a bright, attractive and very successful woman. What I’ve just said about her is just as true of many other people and more so of most. This mode of operation appears like a systemic malignancy to me—cancer of the life—but probably seems normal and acceptable to most people. It’s not a starkly pronounced fear, it’s more a damp sort of dread that seeps outward from the center into every corner of one’s being. When you’re living with it, it just seems normal. Once free of it, you can’t believe you ever lived like that. To me, it’s the simplest thing in the world. I’m going to the city so I pick up a phone and find a place to stay before I even thought about finding a place to stay. I get what I want before I know I want it, and better than I would have thought to want. I never take this sort of effortless functioning for granted and I’m permeated with deep and genuine gratitude many times a day. I’ve arrived at this place of smooth flow mainly by being respectful, by watching how things work, and by keeping my fearful little reptile brain out of the equation. I don’t have much in the way of distorting mental or emotional baggage that I haul around with me, so I guess that allows everything to work as it’s supposed to; smooth and easy. Does all this make me a sucker? A soft touch? Not really. Should the deal go bad, or the lessors try to hold my deposits unjustly, or any of the many things that can go wrong in this type of arrangement do go wrong, then I’d just make another phone call. I’d set a pitbull lawyer on them with instructions to cause regret. Or maybe I’d just shrug and blow it off. I never know how I’ll act until I do because I don’t have any rules or guidelines that tell me how to behave, or maybe just one: Patience. Breathe. Give it time. Allow things to settle out and for patterns to become clear. The point I’m trying to make is that I’m not necessarily a sweetheart of a guy. I could be a total prick, at least in theory, but I must say, there doesn’t seem to be

much call for it. I don’t think about things like this—deals going sour, people betraying people, pitbull lawyers—and they really never occur in my reality. There’d be no point because there’s nothing in it for me to learn. So when I make a call and my sister tells me she knows of a place, I already know all about it. I know it will be ideal, that the owners will be easy to deal with, that it will be in a better area than I would have chosen, and that all sorts of other good things will come of it, not because I orchestrated it with my snazzy little brain, but because I didn’t. And if it appears to line up nicely and then falls through, then I won’t suspect that something didn’t work, but that something bigger and better is at work. I have no rule that makes me a nice guy. I have no rules. Rules are a way we have of defining ourselves, of drawing imaginary boundaries. Such boundaries are artificial and easily erased. Our most strongly held convictions can be wiped away like a layer of make-up through a moment of transcendence or cataclysm, or merely by a slight shift in brain chemistry. Morals, ethics, I have none. As it happens, I’m a nice guy. If it happens another way, I’ll be another kind of guy. I could make the impassioned assertion that I’d never, under any circumstances, cause anyone harm, but events might change and for some reason I’ll have to push some kids in front of a train this afternoon. I doubt it and I hope not, but maybe. Yes, it’s unimaginable, but that doesn’t make it impossible. Unimaginable stuff happens all the time. I have a way of operating in the world and it has nothing to do with rules; not mine or anyone else’s. It has to do with trust and patterns and the absence of artificial boundaries. If those poor little children need to be pushed in front of that speeding locomotive, and that fact becomes clear to me in the way that things becomes clear to me, then we’re gonna need a clean-up crew with strong stomachs and a lot of little bags. You’d think that I could say with certainty that nothing so terrible could ever come to pass, and I’d certainly bet heavily against it, but it’s not a sure thing. Terrible things do come to pass. An objective observer of humanity might say that terrible things are closer to the norm than big, happy things. Why pretend otherwise? Suffering and horror are part of life in the dreamstate, a big part. No, I don’t really think that the universe will have me push children in front of a train this afternoon. That lets me off the hook, but not the children. The universe probably won’t use my hands for it, but it will still push those children in front of that train. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wouldn’t suggest that just anyone can attain to supreme mastery in the art and science of manifesting desires—I know I haven’t—but I would suggest that most anyone, whatever their circumstances, has plenty of room for improvement. I understand that there are influencing factors; gender, race, place, wealth, health, karma, dharma, luck and others that can play a crucial role in the degree to which any individual might realistically hope to elevate, redefine, or undefine themselves, but I also understand that most people are carrying around a lot of crappy crap they don’t need and which serves only to limit their potential for expansion. Some people dabble with this sort of wishcraft and reject it when it doesn’t work for them. They wish for a million dollars or something equally juvenile, and when it doesn’t appear they write the whole subject off as, well, wishful thinking. There’s right-wanting and there’s fear-wanting and a million dollars is fear-wanting. Rightwanting is genuine and represents a true unfolding of one’s unique pattern. This is no small point. Discovering right-wanting within yourself is the journey of unbecoming who you aren’t. Another point I have to make before I move on is that nothing I talk about, whether it’s truth-realization or our true relationship with the universe, is anything other than that which is naturally, rightfully, immutably ours. This isn’t stuff we have to go out and learn or earn or fight for, it’s simply what is. The Zen master who wrote as his own epitaph, “All my life I have sold water by the river. Ha! What a joke!” was addressing exactly this point. This is natural. This is what is. Reality is beyond our wildest dreams and it can all be yours because it already is. The only thing in the way is you. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So I took the apartment for three months with the intention of wallowing in high culture for awhile; theater, museums, libraries, good restaurants. I’m very comfortable doing all these things alone. It wasn’t actually working out as planned, but other, better things were working out very nicely so I was happy enough. This was a few months before the World Trade Center was attacked, so pre-9-11 normalcy still existed. The apartment was actually a renovated warehouse space; lots of sand-blasted brick, rusty iron and big timber. Very large and airy inside with walled off bedrooms and bathrooms and everything else—kitchen, dining room, formal and informal living areas—open. A circular stairway led up to a railed upper level at one end where the owners kept books and a small home office. Not much of a view from the big industrial windows, and it was furnished with more of an eye toward style than comfort for my tastes, but still a very nice living space.

Around this time I received an e-mail from Jolene who had by now seen herself portrayed in a pre-publication copy of Damnedest. She wanted to see me, to speak with me. She had enough money saved up to make the trip and wanted to come for a few days even, she said, if she could only spend a few minutes with me. I replied with a suggestion that she buy a backpack and a Eurail Pass and go spend the summer bumming around Europe instead. She liked that idea and said she’d try to do it, but would still like to see me first. I agreed and after a few e-mails back and forth her plans start taking shape. A week or so before her visit she called to tell me her flight number and arrival time, but she hasn’t found a place to stay yet. Without thinking, I told her that the loft has plenty of room and she should stay there while she’s in town. “Really?” she said. “Great!” A split second later my mind caught up with my mouth. “Hold on a second,” I tell her. I cover the mouthpiece with one hand and rub my temple in a slow, circular, what-the-fuck-did-I-just-do? motion with the other. “I have to speak with your father,” I tell her. “Is he there?” “Yeah,” she says hesitantly. “You’ve been upfront about this trip? Nothing tricky?” “No, they know what I’m doing.” “Okay, put your father on.” “Okay,” she says nervously, “but don’t tell him, you know, don’t tell him anything important.” “I understand. Put him on.” After a few moments her father comes on the line. I introduce myself and we speak in a respectful Mr. Lastname manner. He has some idea of who I am. “Jo-Jo talks about you often enough, Mr. McKenna,” he says, not sounding very pleased about it. I tell him that I thought it was a good idea for him and me to speak so I could

introduce myself and assure him that I’d keep an eye on his daughter while she was in the city. I was painfully aware that everything I said sounded wrong, like a guilty person trying to sound innocent, but there was no help for it. Of course, talking to her father was not strictly necessary. Jolene was old enough to do what she wanted, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to head off a mess before it became one. I was actually somewhat grateful for the error that prompted me to speak with him though, because I now realized it’s something I should have done anyway and hadn’t thought of. He seemed somewhat pleased to hear from me, but was still guarded. Maybe he was a bit relieved to find that this character who had lured his daughter into some crazy cult thing sounded fairly sane and responsible. Just a guess. “Jolene and I were speaking just now and I’m afraid I made a bit of mistake.” In reply he just hmph’d. “I offered to let Jolene stay with me while she’s in town. I have plenty of room here and it seemed like the safest and most sensible thing, but, of course, I immediately realized it might look, well, a bit inappropriate. I thought I should discuss it with you.” There was another low sound from the other end of the phone, but I wanted to finish saying my part before he started on his so I plowed on. Of course, it would have been easier to simply withdraw the initial offer but, appearances aside, it’s really much for the best that Jolene stays with me and, after a moment’s consideration, I realized that the only real concern appearance-wise was her parents. I have no reputation to protect, or if I do it could probably use some spicing up anyway. Jolene’s reputation should be safe because she’s not a big-mouth and because no one who knows her would believe anything raunchy about her anyway. “This situation is exactly what I’m sure Jolene has told you it is. There’s nothing, uh,” I grope for a word and end up using a dumb one, “romantic in all this. In any case, I shouldn’t have made the offer and I’ll certainly respect whatever your wishes might be on the matter.” He doesn’t jump in so I continue, wondering how I got myself into such a dimwitted mess. “I could help her find a hotel or a nice hostel, or maybe she could be accompanied by a family member who could also stay in my place. Whatever—” Now he speaks.

“Are you asking me—?” I cut him off. I know exactly what he means because that’s how this whole thing sounds to me too, like a veiled petition to court his daughter, or to secure his blessing for something weird. I roll my eyes and plod on. “I’m just telling you the situation. Whatever you say is how it’ll be. I made this offer to your daughter in the spirit of friendship and concern. It’s a very large apartment I have here and the city can be a tricky place.” Dumb. Just plain dumb across the board. But that’s the situation so I don’t kick myself too hard. We talk a bit more. He gives it a bit of thought and decides I sound okay, and that his daughter has some funny ideas but she’s a good kid, and if we’re going to do anything inappropriate it probably wouldn’t matter what he thought of the living arrangements anyway, and that it would be easier for him and his wife to know that Jo-Jo wouldn’t be completely on her own in the city. My sense of it, though, is that he isn’t so much concerned about these housing arrangements as he is of the larger issue of his daughter becoming a stranger, and of me as the guy who might have caused it. He thanks me, a bit halfheartedly, and we leave it at that. Ack. The Journey to the Shaman I could have met her at the airport, or I could have sent a car and had the driver waiting for her, holding up a sign with her name. That probably would have given her a thrill. The thing though, and this is an important thing, is that the journey to the shaman is as much a part of the shamanic experience as the visit with him. I’m not a shaman, of course, but the adage fully applies. This kid has gone through whatever it takes a young farmgirl from the cornbelt to track me down, scrape up cash, break away from family and home, and get on a plane to one of the world’s most intimidating urban centers; in short, to embark on a great journey. An itch in her head must have grown into a torment to necessitate such a journey and I’m not about to diminish that by hauling her up the last few feet. My part starts with buzzing her in. It’s not supposed to be easy.

I return from an arthouse showing of The Winter Guest to find her asleep, using her backpack as a pillow, at the elevator gate. I don’t want to wake her and I can’t go past her without making a racket, but I also don’t want to stand out here watching a string of saliva trickle down the zipper of a side pocket. The dilemma resolves itself when she peeks out of one eye and then the other. “Oh! Hi!” she screeches and jumps up and wipes her lips and wraps me in a hug, “Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi!” I hi back and break away and ask with avuncular concern if she made it in one piece, which I can see she has. We get her settled into the extra bedroom. I give her the spare set of keys and we go for a walk around the neighborhood. We find a nice Mediterranean place for dinner and discuss her plans over olives, feta, lamb and rice. We don’t get into anything she refers to as important. There’ll be time for that and she has other things she wants to do while she’s here, which we also don’t get into too much, but I can tell she’s going to do some looking around. She’s happy and upbeat on the outside but beneath that even an unastute human observer like myself can see she’s got serious matters on her mind. I particularly enjoy being with people in this state of mind because it means they’re dealing with serious issues, but there’s no rush about anything so I keep the conversation light and cheerful and try to help her relax. Kill the Swiss The next morning she’s up late. I know she brought a bunch of books and a folder of internet printouts and that she’s working at reading and writing to get herself to some resolution so that probably kept her up into the small hours. I get her seated at the raised breakfast bar that’s a part of the kitchen’s island counter, pour her some juice and get started cooking her an omelet. As we animate these householder characters and inhabit this scene of domestic routine, she begins to talk about “important” stuff. She starts sharing her views on Buddhism with me. After a few minutes of listening to her it becomes clear that she’s trying to sell herself on Buddhism by trying to sell it to me. It’s also clear from the eagerness with which she’s trying to sell it that she has reservations that have not yet resolved themselves into focus for her. She talks to me in a way that suggests that she’s really trying to convince herself of something she knows better

than to believe. That’s how desperation works; the frightened heart seeks to overrule the doubting mind. Fear overshadows reason and gives rise to faith. I don’t say anything. I finish her omelet and put it in front of her and allow her to go on. She started out with a life-is-suffering thing but that’s hard to pull off if you’ve never missed a meal or had a physical ailment more grievous than a zit. She then edged briefly into some bodhisattva thing about not resting until all sentient beings are liberated which made us both grimace a bit, then a few words in praise of mindfulness and tranquility, and now she’s talking about compassion. I could tell her that compassion is just another way of keeping our attention turned safely outward rather than destructively inward, but if I don’t interrupt I’m confident that she’ll hear the same discordant note in her words that I hear and talk herself out of whatever she’s trying to talk herself into. She might need me to listen to this, but she doesn’t need me to respond. She’s entering Buddhism along a circular drive, and if I don’t interrupt her process she’ll soon be back out on the road, disappointed, but ready to continue the journey. She winds down and picks at her omelet. “Jolene, pretend there’s a big red button on the counter, okay?” “Okay,” she says, perked up by a new game. “If you press it, you kill everyone in Switzerland.” She gives me her reserved, lip-biting smile. “Okay,” she says warily. “If you press it, no one will ever know. You’ll never be blamed or connected to the deaths of all those millions of nice Swiss people.” “Yeah?” she says. “So?” “So why not press it?” She brightens and begins to answer immediately, then darkens and bites down on her bottom lip to hold the answer in. This is like one of those goofy morality questions they ask you in the seventh grade, like would you turn in a friend for

shoplifting, except I’m not trying to teach her morality, I’m trying to help her get past it. She’s looking for a safe haven and she hopes she’s found it in Buddhism, but some part of her knows she hasn’t. Here’s the thing they don’t tell you about compassion, maybe because they don’t know: Compassion has nothing to do with awakening. It’s unrelated. It sounds good and it’s a tough thing to take a stand against, but it’s a total disconnect. The Golden Rule of Compassionism is Do Unto Others. The Golden Rule of Awakism is Think For Yourself. There is no such thing as a Buddha of Compassion. If you’re compassionate prior to awakening, that impulse indicates an area where something false needs to be hacked away. If you’re compassionate after awakening, you’re not awake. If you’re holding out for the awakened state that includes compassion, maybe you’ll find Buddhism a comfortable place to kill the time. I watch Jolene. I don’t know much about human beings, but I can see what’s going on in her head. The first thing she realized is that this question has something to do with what she came here for, even though she hasn’t told me what that is yet and she may not be sure herself. Next, she started mentally scrolling through the obvious answers—they’re innocent people, it’s just plain wrong, I’ll roast in hell, etc—without settling on one. After that she would have looked for less obvious answers—karmic imbalance, European destabilization, leaving the Alps unattended —found none, and is now, or I miss my guess, revisiting the obvious ones. She looks very frustrated at her inability to provide a simple answer to a simple question. The reason for picking on Buddhism is to better understand Maya. It’s her thing. We all buy into the notion that in order to awaken an intermediary is required, an intercessor, but the only intercessor is Maya. Kill the intercessor. Kill the teacher. Kill the Buddha. DIY. You have eyes, you have a brain, do the math, look for yourself. This isn’t one way, it’s the only way. That’s why I’ve taken measures to make sure no one can glom onto me, to appoint me their personal savior, to wedge me in between themselves and reality. That’s our natural tendency in these perilous waters; to reach out, to grab something, to attach, to put something between ourselves and the threat of eternal nothingness that lurks just beneath the surface. We want to maintain the illusion that we are not completely alone on an infinite sea but, of course, that’s exactly what we are. And there ain’t no we about it.

“I’d feel terrible,” Jolene says at last, making it more of a question than an assertion. I give her the mean look and she squirms and goes back to work. Whatever she answers, I’ll give her the mean look. I don’t want her to answer it, I just want her to think about it. I want her to take a hard look at obvious answers. What could be more obvious than the reason for not pushing a button and killing millions of innocent people? And yet— “Why should I press it?” Jolene asks. “Maybe that’s the better question. I don’t need a reason not to press it since I don’t have any reason to press it. I’ll just go on as if there’s no button. Or maybe there’s no reason not to press it. Is that what you’re saying? Fuck it. I press the button, right?” “Those are evasions,” I reply. “Neither of those are the answers to the question. The question is why not press it.” “I don’t know,” she says. “Why not?” “Hell if I know.” She slams her fist down on the imaginary button and gives me a mischievous smile like she might have just done something terribly naughty. “Oh well,” I say ruefully, “there goes yodeling.” “Never cared for it,” she says through a big, toothy grin. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ After a few days we’ve settled into a routine and see each other only in passing and for one or two meals a day, usually out, usually a walk or short cab ride away. Jolene has been doing a lot more with her time here than just hanging out with unhip old me; she’s been getting out and networking. Once she had her arrangements in place to be here for a week she started using the internet to figure out where she wanted to go including some temples, some Eastern and New Age book shops, and at least one mystical coffee shop. She branched out from those starting points. She’s talked to people and followed leads. She hasn’t made much headway with the subway so she’s throwing a lot of money at cabs and zigzagging around the city and borough-hopping rather haphazardly and surely expensively.

She hasn’t kept me updated on her activities, but I can imagine. If she’s been visiting temples and speaking with monks or nuns, they might have treated her like a cute little tourist girl visiting the big city from the farmbelt for about half a howdy-do, but then they would have found something unexpected. They would have found that cute little ninety-eight pound Jolene has the hunger. She doesn’t want the tour and she doesn’t want the brochure. She wants very specific answers to very specific questions. If she can’t get them to come out of the gentle monk’s mouth, she’ll crawl into his brain with a flashlight and a pickaxe to see if they’re in there. If she doesn’t find what she’s looking for, the monk will become as disposable as a gum wrapper. I know all this because I know the hunger and I know that it’s growing inside Jolene. She’s not looking for new friends, she’s not looking for general knowledge or pleasant experiences. She’s getting into a very serious frame of mind and her appetites are getting very powerful and very specific. I don’t mean to get another vampire thing going here, but it’s a wickedly good analogy. Improbability After she’s been around for a few days I ask what she’s been eating during her forays into the spiritual side of the city. She answers, not surprisingly, not much. She grabs a coffee and a pastry when she can, maybe a salad now and then. The idea of someone visiting New York and not experiencing a proper deli is unbearable so I ask her to pencil me in for lunch today and off we go. As we entered the narrow deli we got squeezed in behind a woman of about sixty; short, stout, and severe. Just inside the door she dropped her leather binder on the floor. I couldn’t get around her to be a gentleman and pick it up for her, so we had nowhere to go until she retrieved it and moved on. What spilled out of her binder was unmistakably a copy of Damnedest with the black and white cover of the prepublication review copies, all marked up, bulging with post-it notes, and held closed with rubber bands. Jolene saw it as clearly as I did. We entered the deli. The woman took a number and waited to be served. I motioned to Jolene and we turned around and left. As we walked I knew Jolene was watching me with a big drop-jawed grin on her face, but I wasn’t ready to deal with her amazement yet, I was still dealing with my own. This was way beyond too much. What are the odds? Too astronomical to compute. There are only like fifty of these pre-pub copies in existence. What are the chances

that I’ll be in New York, entering some deli behind some woman in such a way that I can’t get by, just as she drops her binder and spills out a copy of a book I’d just finished writing, face up so I could see what it was? No chance. The whole thing was so far outside the realm of possibility that my first impulse was to look around for the hidden cameras of some TV stunt. I am pretty well attuned to the subtle nuances of the universe. It’s through this carefully developed sense that I relate to the world with an unerring ease and confidence. This thing with the proof copy, however, had nothing to do with nuance. This was a deafening gong, nothing subtle about it, but indicating what? For what purpose? I had absolutely no idea. It was just this huge, astounding nonthing. This event was so fantastically unlikely that I might have doubted my own memory afterward had not Jolene seen it as clearly as I. (Perhaps that woman will someday read this and remember dropping the book as she entered a deli and find out now that the author of the book was standing inches behind her. What will she make of that?) My mind scurried to get a handle on this, but couldn’t. What’s the point of such a bizarre occurrence? What am I to make of it? Has the universe simply abandoned all restraint? It’s so utterly, preposterously, incalculably unlikely that the only conclusion you can come to is that, once you get to know it a little bit, the universe is really just a big, playful puppy. I might interpret it to mean that the universe is telling me we’re headed into a whole new way of functioning wherein nothing is too much, nothing too absurd or too fantastic. Maybe the dream metaphor is no metaphor at all. Or maybe the universe is telling me that the book was out there now, that it’s a living thing with its own course to follow, its own destiny. Too much? Not enough? None of these explanations feel right, but I can’t tell. Maybe the dream is unraveling right before my eyes. That would be redundant and I’d mildly rather it didn’t, but who knows. Maybe the universe, for its own reasons, wanted me to write about this experience, to play with these conclusions in print. Maybe it happened so I could say it happened, so someone could learn something by reading about it, get their next door opened. Maybe it was, somehow, for Jolene. I really have no idea. Fortunately, I don’t feel the need to understand everything. Most things make themselves clear in time, but there’s nothing in me that suggests that if something doesn’t make sense to me, it must not make sense. Everything makes sense. In the few years since this incident I’ve had a dozen other similar probability-defying experiences, and the explanation I’ve settled on is the big, playful puppy theory.

My Uncle the Vampire I’m laying on an armless leather couch trying to establish a deeper rapport with Mozart’s Requiem which is being played on DVD by full symphony orchestra on the TV and filling the room from the surround-sound speaker system. I have a ticket for a performance of Requiem in a few weeks, and I don’t like to go to these things cold. I have the DVD, a CD, and some books to help me out so that when I attend the actual performance I’ll have at least a basic familiarity with what’s being expressed, by who, and why, and this will allow me to relax and appreciate the experience rather than waste it by staying in my head the whole time. I’m a little familiar with the Requiem but I’m not a real classical music buff, so it’s this added dimension that makes the whole thing so enjoyable. Mozart died before finishing the Requiem and there are several versions of the completed work; the DVD I have is the Levin version and I have a CD of the Maunder version, but the performance will be the Süssmayr version, so it’s an interesting adventure in appreciation. Or so I’d hoped. As it turned out, I only muddied the whole thing for myself; I should have gone deep into one instead of shallow into three. Nevertheless, it was an interesting endeavor and still is. I kept at it and I now have a much better understanding of the piece and of the attempts to finish it, and I now have a preference for the Levin version from a more informed perspective. I bore you with all this to explain what I mean when I say I went to NYC to wallow in the arts for awhile. I don’t race through museums, see every play and concert and snarf down expensive meals. On this particular trip I put my attention on the Requiem, two plays, a dozen or so restaurants, The Cloisters in northern Manhattan, and the Botanical Gardens in the Bronx. There was some other miscellaneous stuff, and I also went to Chicago for a week at one point, but the way I go about this sort of thing is to get a bit immersed instead of just skipping across the surface. Interesting? Probably not, but that’s what I’m doing, head flipped back over the end of the couch, mouth agape, somber music filling the room, when in walks Jolene plus one. Although viewing the situation upside down, I can see that she has brought home a stray. I hit the pause button, close my mouth, and roll awkwardly over, backward and upward until I’m approximately upright.

Jolene introduces me to Zach. He’s tall, thin, early twenties and exceedingly groomed. He has one of those closely trimmed moustache and partial beard deals that combine with his two small hoop earrings to give him a pirate-ish air. I’m pained to think that just shaving and trimming hair must take him an hour each morning, which is about what I spend on it per annum. I shake his hand, trying not to come off like Jolene’s parent or guardian, and tell them to make themselves at home. Jolene grabs some bottles of iced tea out of the fridge and passes them around before plopping down on the futon I just sprang up from, so I turn off the TV and DVD player and start to consider what I want to do next. Zach stands nearby, holding his bottle, and I’m just standing there holding mine, and I start to get the idea that we’re all here together rather than them being together and me going away. Being socially inept, my usual response to situations like this is to do what I like and let people be offended if they want. In this case, that means I leave, which I start to do when Jolene speaks up. “Zach and I met at the coffee shop,” she informs me. I knew she had heard about some nearby coffee place with a mystical motif and a spiritually oriented crowd and that was where she had gone off to this afternoon. I didn’t know they offered takeouts like young Zach, but it really couldn’t be less of my business. Seeing that I have no response but an insipid smile, she continues. “Zach is going to be a really great spiritual teacher someday,” she goes on. “He was in the coffee shop talking and there were like ten people standing around his table listening to him.” She smiles at me and there’s a twinkle of playfulness in her look, so now I’m a little more interested. What has she dragged back to our lair, and why? “I told him about you,” she says and I feel my head tilt slightly. I know she didn’t tell him about me, but I guess she told him something. “I told him you had very strong spiritual beliefs but that they were not really in the mainstream and that you were writing a book, and he said he’d like to meet you someday and I said how ‘bout now?” I’m intrigued because I know that she hasn’t done what it looks like she’s done and I’m wondering what she’s really doing. I’m also amused by the fact that she’s doing it; playing me without me knowing exactly how. She hasn’t brought him here so she could watch me devour him like something out of an episode of My Uncle the Vampire. That would be pointless and unkind, which she’s not, so her little tease

isn’t working on that level, but that doesn’t explain what she is doing. Why did she bring this young man here? The way to spring the trap is to try backing out of it. “She’s overstated it a bit,” I say to Zach. “I just talk a good game.” I start heading out. “Excuse me, I have some work to catch up on.” “What’s your book going to be about?” asks Zach, trying to get a game going. I look at Jolene who looks back with mock curiosity. “No book,” I say, “just playing with some ideas—” “Jolene said you didn’t really agree with—” “Really, I don’t know much—” “You know, tradition teaches us—” “Conformity and stagnation?” “Huh?” “I thought you were going to say that tradition teaches conformity and stagnation.” “I mean Buddhist tradition. Buddhist tradition shows us—” “Forget tradition. Start fresh, you’ll have a much better time of it. Start your own tradition. Really, I have to run—” He laughs a bit. “You can’t just dismiss centuries of—” “Sure you can,” I say. “In fact, you have to, or else you’ll end up right where everyone always ends up. What’s the point of that?” He laughs a bit uncomfortably, sizing me up to see what he’s dealing with. Tradition is just a word for stuff you accept as true without verifying it for yourself. Tradition is the deeply rutted path that gets formed after many years of being followed by the herd. Buddha said this... Shankara said that... Who gives a fat rat’s ass what they said or what anyone said? You don’t know they said it, you don’t know what they meant by it, you don’t know if it’s been passed down accurately, you don’t even

know they existed, so what do you know? You don’t know anything, and even if you did, you still wouldn’t. It’s self-verify or fail, simple as that. The uncritical acceptance typical of the herd mentality is the soil in which all false beliefs take root. Instead of self-reliance and self-determination, most people just buy a package deal; no thinking required. “Jolene told me you like to take a subjective approach.” Yes, I am reminded, Jolene is all that matters here. “As opposed to what?” I ask. “As opposed to taking an objective look,” he says. He seems to catch a wave of energy and suddenly he’s off. “You have to get the whole picture, you have to understand just what a really great evolutionary plan we’re a part of. This whole thing, this whole planet earth and human race and all the rest of it, it’s like this one great big spiraling self-evolving experiment in the mind of God. I plan on going to a Zen monastery as soon as I can get up the money to get to Kyoto. Get myself into the presence of a true master. Those people really understand this stuff.” He’s a full-body talker. His energy extends outward into his arms and legs so the his hands lend emphasis to every point and his whole body moves up and down, to and fro. He has to set his bottle of tea down or he’d jostle it all over the floor. I prudishly place a coaster under his bottle and he doesn’t miss a beat. “We look at this whole thing, this whole world thing, as if it’s real, but there’s no reality to it,” he exclaims animatedly. “Perception creates reality, but whose perception? Mine? Yours? Jolene’s?” I shake my head in wide-eyed bewilderment. “No,” he continues, “because we have no more reality than anything else. That’s the whole thing Zen teaches us, that there is no us. Ego, self, me, you, it’s all an illusion, a facade. Zen destroys the facade. That’s the purpose of zazen, of sitting in meditation under the guidance of a great roshi. That’s what koans are for. You have to break through these barriers. It’s all really so simple. They make it seem so complicated so you have to keep coming to them to get it explained or something, you know, the religious people and the gurus and everyone, but it’s really so simple —”

I can see now what my role is to be. I would never consider conducting any sort of dialogue with Zach since he’s very much in the outward-expression mode and nowhere close to the shut-up-and-listen mode. He has no questions, only answers. Anyway, Jolene wouldn’t have brought him here just to see me debate him on his level. I start to suspect that the reason she did bring him here is quite nearly the same reason for her coming here in the first place. “We’re all just pieces,” continues Zach without pause, “small units playing our role in this vast spatio-temporal matrix, like a universal continuum, you know? We’re all so small, and yet, each of us is like the whole thing. It looks like there’s all this stuff going on, but there is no stuff; no you, no me. That’s the whole point of Zen Buddhism and that’s why it’s so cool. You don’t learn it, you do it. You don’t study and work hard to master concepts, you sit and work on koans under a qualified roshi until the whole illusion thing just pops out of existence. See? Ultimately there is only consciousness. Everything else is just perception.” “Cool,” I say, smiling and nodding to keep him going. Out of the corner of my eye I see what I hope to see. Jolene has a polite, attentive smile pasted on her face, but in her eyes I can see that this little get together is playing out as well as could be hoped. She is seriously unamused. Maybe Zach sounded better to her in the coffee shop. Probably she’s never seen anyone like Zach, or been exposed to this sort of big, fun, spiritual odyssey approach before. “There’s only one truth, dude, see? And it doesn’t matter what you call your spiritual path, whether it’s Christianity or Buddhism or Catholic or Zen, cause it’s really all the same thing. This right here,” he indicates us, the loft, earth, the third dimension, “this ain’t it, man. This ain’t the real thing. The real thing is, like, beyond all our dreams.” I see how he functions. I see that he’s so consumed by playing his big expressive role that it will be virtually impossible for him to hear anything except his next cue. I test this theory with an out-of-nowhere question so Jolene can see it too. “But what about war?” I ask. “War, exactly! That’s what I’m saying. If everyone would just, you know, like burst out of their self-centered me-me-me mindset and try to adopt the universal view which, like I’m saying, is the real thing, the way things really are, then they’d forget all about war. Can you imagine what a paradise this world could be if everyone just became, like, aware of their true potential? Can you imagine?” He looks to both

Jolene and me to see if we can imagine and is too swept up in his own momentum to notice that we’re not exactly in the same space he’s in. “War would be completely forgotten. It would be like something in the history books. And instead of man focusing all his attention and resources on, you know, the Pentagon and controlling other people and stuff, we could focus on the things that really matter, like feeding people and curing disease and flood relief and stuff. Can you imagine if everyone just stopped all this coveting and hatred and fear and really started pulling together and trying to make a difference? Think of what a wonderful paradise this whole world could be if there were no more polluters and oil spills and crime and stuff. This would be paradise. It would be like heaven except not later in some weird, you know, after you die and clouds and everything, but right here, on earth. That’s what God really wants for us but we’ve totally screwed it up.” He pauses to take a breath and to see if we’re managing to keep up. It’s obvious that he’s reading from several different scripts. A not uncommon approach; Melting-Pot Spirituality, New Age Eclectic. He’s like a bag lady combing the alleyways of esoteric philosophy and tossing every pretty bauble and goo-gaw he finds into his magical mystery cart, eager to share his mismatched collection with anyone who can’t distinguish priceless from worthless. I suppose that if he ever gets to a Kyoto monastery the first thing they’ll do is hoist him up by the ankles and shake all this loose crap out of him like weapons off a cartoon gangster. I’m toning his speech down a bit in order to give the reader some idea of what he was saying without using all the exclamation points a more accurate rendering would require. I’ve also taken the liberty of removing many hundreds of you knows, likes, stuffs, mans and dudes. I never really had much exposure to coffeehouse spirituality, if that’s what this could be called, but I’m actually enjoying it. Zach has a lot of personal charm and the fact that he’s so stoked up by what he’s talking about makes him fun to listen to, for me anyway. I don’t think Jolene is having so much fun. I look and see what Zach has failed to notice; Jolene is staring straight through him. I also see that this couldn’t have been planned better; Zach’s scattergun message and unique style of spiritual carpetbombing is exactly what she needs to be seeing right now. “So what can we do about it?” I ask, not wanting to let Zach pause too long and lose his momentum. He eyes me for an instant to see if I’m sincere and either decides I am or that it doesn’t matter before launching back into his discourse. I want to keep him going a bit longer because I want Jolene to get this and be done with it. Whatever is operating in her, I don’t want it left squirming because I was soft and

wanted to be gentle with her. It’s much more humane to get these things killed while the killing is good. “Exactly!” Zach resumes with infectious good cheer. “What can we do? That’s the whole issue. The whole question of, you know, spirituality, of religion, comes down to that one thing; what can we actually do? We have to grow, expand. We have to shake off this,” here he twists his mouth and squints his eyes and curls his fingers into claws to convey his disgust at what most people call life, “this smallness, this smallness,” he says. He looks to see if I get it. I have the next question in my eyes. Yes, my gaze asks, but how? “How do we do it?” he states it aloud. “That’s the big question. How do we get out of our small irrelevant little selves and start enjoying, you know, reaping the benefits of our true potential? It’s all about self-realization. That’s all it is, really. It all sounds so massive and, you know, like science fiction, but it’s not. That’s the thing. This isn’t all pie in the sky and everything. This is the truth of each one of us. This is who we really are.” And? say my eyes. “And,” he rocks on, “that’s what we have to do. We have to break out of these tiny little shells and then we can step up into our true universal selves. That’s where it’s at. All this here, everything we think of as everything is really like nothing. That’s what Zen is all about, returning to our true state; the state of non-being. Once we do that, realize our true state, we’re liberated. No more coming back. No more cycle of births and deaths. No more karma, no more suffering. We’re finally free!” Zach goes on for another few minutes but starts losing energy and fumbling a bit when it comes to the actual methods by which such liberation might be attained. He has some favorable views on meditation, prana, kundalini, getting outside more, eating better, reading elevating books, drinking green tea, and spending less time in malls. He looks around at our fairly upscale digs and gives me a look that suggests I might take an honest look my own overly acquisitive tendencies. I guess Jolene didn’t tell him it was a rental. The point of sharing all this isn’t to poke fun at Zach or anyone at Zach’s particular level of comprehension. I think I was probably like Zach myself at some point; thrilled and awed, eager to express and share, a little sketchy as far as doctrine went; a big-eyed boy in a vast toystore of shiny new ideas. Jolene is probably right, a few more years and someone with Zach’s enthusiasm and powerful presence will

probably be playing the satsang circuit. He can’t keep pounding out his crazy jazz chops, though. It’s not enough to be a great player, you’ve got to have something to play. People want a catchy melody laid over a soothing, familiar harmony. If he’s smart he’ll hitch his wagon to Advaita; that’s the hot new sound. He’s tending toward Zen, but that tune has been played to death. The industry needs a new Zen and Advaita fits the bill; it sounds exotic, it means something vaguely profound yet unthreatening, and no one cares about its roots so it comes with no baggage and can be molded to meet the demands of the marketplace. No, it’s not a merchandiser’s dream like Zen, but they’ll fix that and soon we’ll all be buying Advaita cookware and Advaita thongs and Advaita ceiling tiles in no time. A sugary sort of Advaita junk-philosophy has already begun to emerge and I’m sure it will have its own key figures—perhaps Zach someday—writing books and instructing us in the Way of Nonduality. Shit, as I think about it I’m talking myself into writing another book, something with huge commercial appeal, like Zen and the Tao of Advaita: The Pathless Path of No-Mind to Not-Twoness. Or maybe Zach will go to Kyoto and hang around the ball-busters for awhile. That’s a sad thought. Westerners seem to get a strong Zen buzz built up and the next thing you know they’re returning from a Zen monastery five years later with less to show for those years than if they’d been spent in prison or a coma. Admirably, they seldom allow failure to discourage them from writing a book on the subject. Most likely, young Zach will just get himself situated at his own spiritual comfort level and go on to live a normal life. Anyway, Zach isn’t my concern, Jolene is. I manage to usher Zach out as Jolene makes a vague promise to meet him at the coffee shop before she leaves the city. When I return to the living area Jolene has gone to her own room and closed the door. Bookstore Guru On the last full day of Jolene’s visit, one of the big downtown bookstores is hosting a lunch hour reading and booksigning by a bestselling New Age author. She wanted to go and hear him speak. She asked me to go with her, which I did, but I didn’t want to listen to this person speak, so when we got to the store I sent her in alone and we made arrangements to meet up after. I arrive at our appointed meeting place early, but she’s earlier. She looks pretty dejected and I’m starting to have a pretty good idea why. She came here looking for something and she’s not finding it. The guy who spoke at the bookstore sells a lot of

books and she understood that to mean that he had something valid to say. She assumed, as many do, that the more popular a teacher is, the more valuable the teaching. “You’re too young and pretty to look so sad,” I tell her. “I’m fine,” she replies. “Can we go somewhere else?” “Walk or sit?” “Walk, I guess.” We walk and I don’t talk. I’m glad she seems sad and angry. I would have been surprised and a bit disappointed if she’d come away from that event in high spirits. I knew she wouldn’t, though, but that was no reason to discourage her from going. Just the opposite. If she had a yearning to take a closer look at this particular fellow and his views but didn’t follow through because she sensed I wouldn’t approve, that would have just been repression and she’d have to deal with the source of the yearning again later in a more pernicious form. The process of awakening is a series of disillusionments, and each one hurts. We head down into the subway and catch the c-train. We emerge at 81st street and head into Central Park. We amble about and she shows signs of recognizing where we are and starts bubbling up out of her gloom. She knows parts of the park from different movies she’s seen. She’s still not talkative and I’m not wishing she was, so we head over to Fifth near the museums and hail a cab back to the loft. Instead of going up, though, we stroll down the street to a coffee place, grab some fancy drinks and settle in on an overstuffed couch. She tucks her legs under her so she’s able to face me more directly. I want to talk about nothing for a few minutes. I know what kind of mindset she’s in and I want to help her relax a little and not be jumping out of her skin. I launch into a very endearing little diatribe about how the marketing bastards at the ministry of newspeak have so effectively removed the words small, medium and large from our vocabulary that coffee vendors and fast food clerks can’t even translate them anymore. If you want a medium coffee or a small order of fries, I explain to Jolene who isn’t half listening, you have to learn that particular establishment’s particular jargon. In one place, small, medium and large might now be Grande, Supremo and El Presidente. In the next place they’re Large (small), Extra Large (medium), and Aversion Therapy (large). Most annoying is the blank look you receive from the

clerk when you try to revert to simpler but unsanctioned terminology. “So, Extra Large is medium?” you ask. “No, like, uh, Extra Large is Extra Large,” you’re told. I look up when she doesn’t respond and find a startling sight. She is staring at me, wide-eyed, tears streaming down her face. She is completely open and unabashed, making no effort to conceal herself. She allows herself to be profoundly exposed. I show respect for her unguardedness by gazing back at her with equal frankness. Her breathing is a barely audible moan. This is a very sad young lady. “I feel so small,” she says in a hoarse whisper. “I feel so alone. I’ve never felt like this. I don’t see an end. I don’t see how it can get better.” I don’t reply right away. My natural tendency, like anyone’s, I suppose, would be to console her, but she’s in the early stages of grieving for her own lost life, feeling the separation from herself and processing that unexpected and unprecedented loss. She doesn’t need to be consoled at this point, she needs to go through this and come out the other side. The thing she’s grieving for isn’t fully dead and the thing that’s grieving isn’t fully born, so what she’s going through right now is more like the coming attractions reel. “Try to step out of yourself and observe this moment,” I tell her. “I know that sounds difficult, that you’re completely immersed right now, but it’s important. You have to learn to separate yourself from your character and the best time to do that is when it’s hardest to do. Anyone can enter the witnessing mode when it’s all blue skies, the trick is doing it when black clouds are rolling in. Look at this pain you’re feeling. Look at the person experiencing the pain through my eyes instead of yours. Take a breath and do it now.” She takes a breath and releases a long shuddering sigh. She closes her eyes and I turn my attention away. When I look back, little Jolene is eying me with the half smirk of someone who brought a gun to a knife fight. That’s a good look to have. “Can I tell you why I came here?” she asks. “Why I wanted to see you?” “Can I tell you?” I reply. She remains motionless for a second, then nods. “You want someplace to go. You want to find a group of people to be with. You want to land somewhere, to be part of something. You hope that there is such a thing.”

She’s biting her bottom lip now and nodding her head. “Something around Buddhism, I guess. Something in California?” She nods silently. “Zen?” Another nod. “You made a wrong turn,” I say. “California’s the other way.” She doesn’t move. “Or maybe you already knew the answer and you didn’t want to believe it, so now I’ll say it for you. You’re already beyond Buddhism. Buddhism, even Zen, would be a step backward for you, and there are no backward steps. We can never go back, it’s not an option. You understand that?” She nods. “You’re on your own, kid. You’re already further out than Buddhism goes. You’re further out than anyone can go with you. You know there’s no more being a part of things for you and you came to see me in a bit of a panic, looking for a different answer. You want to hook up, maybe to Buddhism, maybe to some bestselling author or cool-groove satsang teacher. Maybe to me. Maybe you thought I could catch you, reel you in, make it all solid for you again, you think?” She sits motionless, head down. “You had firm footing and you started losing it that day when you saw the cows in church. Now you’re scrambling to find it again, but you never will. You’re floating up out of the warm muck in which most people spend their lives. That muck is the only life you’ve ever known and now you’re leaving it behind. Very scary. Don’t waste time feeling bad about it, everyone panics at this point. You can’t not. No one slips gracefully beneath the waves. This is way past bravery and cowardice; those terms mean nothing here.” “Is this the First Step?” she asks.

“Yes, this is the First Step, which is really the last step. See that? Between Damnedest and Spiritual Autolysis you didn’t need me. You already had everything you needed. You could have saved yourself the airfare.” She doesn’t laugh or smile. In her eyes I see that she is already older than most people ever get. City Lights We arrive back at the loft worn out and hungry. I grab a bite and lay down for a nap, telling Jolene to fend for herself. She’s leaving early in the morning and I think she’s a little disappointed to discover that we’re not doing a nice restaurant or theater or anything special on her last night. I wake up from my nap at around 7:30 and find her dozing on the futon. I nudge her with a foot and she opens her eyes. “Hi,” she says. “Hi,” I say back. “Get ready, we’re going out.” She rolls up onto her knees. “Should I dress up?” she asks eagerly. I look at her like she’s nuts. “No, anything is fine.” “Oh,” she says, disappointed. “Okay.” We head out and up a few streets where it’s easier to find a cab. I give the driver a street address. He says, “You mean the…” and I say, “make it the Seaport,” before he blurts it out. A few minutes later we emerge from the financial district to the East River piers. We get out of the cab near the Seaport and head south on foot, the Twin Towers looming large above. She sees a sign for the Staten Island Ferry. “Are we gonna ride the ferry?” she asks. “Doesn’t that sound like fun?” She tries to sound enthusiastic. “Yeah!” I laugh and we continue walking. I stop in front of the heliport.

“What’s this?” she asks. “What’s it look like?” I ask. “A helicopter place,” she says. “That’s what it is, a helicopter place.” “Yeah, so? What are we doing here?” she says. I borrow a line from Contact. “Wanna take a ride?” Her eyes get huge. “No way!” She wallops me a good one. “Way.” “No way!!” she says and I jump back before the next walloping. “Uh, way.” “Wow! Really? Where are we going?” “It’s called a City Lights Tour. We’re just going to fly around Manhattan. Probably from here to the Statue of Liberty, up the Hudson, hook around the Bronx and down the East River. See the city, the bridges, or, you know, Jersey and Brooklyn if you get a shitty seat.” She darkens a few degrees. “A shitty seat? How many people—?” I laugh. “Just you and me, kid. Now this is a pretty romantic thing, so I don’t want you getting all gooshy on me—” She pushes me and then gets very solemn. “I can’t do this,” she says quietly. “It’s too much. This must cost like a thousand dollars.”

“Not quite. Anyway, you’re doing me the favor. I’ve wanted to do this for years, but not alone. You’re doing this for me as much as I’m doing it for you, okay?” “Really?” she says, almost pleading. “Really.” For a few hundred dollars you can jump out of an airplane two miles high and probably live. For under a hundred bucks your local flight instructor will take you up in a Cessna and let you drive. For less than a thousand you can take a night flight over one of the world’s great cities at its most radiant and splendid in a privately chartered helicopter. Bungee jumping, supercoasters, whitewater rafting, at ten times the price these experiences would be among the greatest bargains one can strike in life; the most memorable and cherished. These are the things that will be with us on the deathbed, not the money we didn’t spend. The cost of this night flight isn’t going to put a dent in my lifestyle, but even if it was my last nickel, to what better use could I possibly put it? We go in. I leave her in the seating area while I handle some things at the counter and hit the head. I return and we go back outside to talk. We have time before moonrise so we go for a stroll. Time to give Jolene what she came for. “Within the context of your personal life, of your future, Jolene, what can you say for sure?” She knows this is something she’s supposed to think about and she does. She takes a full minute before she answers. “Well, I’m going to die, I guess.” “You guess?” “No, I mean, I don’t guess. It just sounds weird to say it.” “Say what?” “I’m going to die.”

“There’s a line in The Mahabharata, Krishna talking to Karna, the warrior who will fight Arjuna. Krishna is telling Karna, in essence, that Arjuna’s victory is assured.” “Yeah, I watched it.” “Krishna tells him, ‘Look, it’s spring, the buds are sweet, the water sparkles, everyone is joyful. We are going to die.’” She looks at me for a long moment, wondering where this is going. In this or any similar conversation, there are two different dynamics at work. There’s the apparent dynamic, which is what Jolene sees and what any onlooker would see, and there’s the underlying dynamic, which is what I see and where the real work is getting done. It’s as true of me and Jolene standing on a New York sidewalk as it is of any conversation I have or words I write. The person who appears to be the intended recipient is, in a way, just an agent, a go-between, and sometimes an unwitting one. It looks like I’m talking to Jolene, but I’m really talking through her. I’m speaking past the shell to the little bastard within. (I always think of it as a masculine energy regardless of the host’s gender.) The little bastard is hidden in there, deep behind the eyes. He’s jumping up and down, waving his arms, trying to get my attention. He doesn’t know exactly what he wants from me, but he thinks I know and he’s right. He wants what any revolutionary plotting a violent overthrow wants; weapons and intelligence. Things that burn and destroy, and the knowledge to aim them and use them. The real thing that’s going on here is that rebel forces have contacted me for aid and I am surreptitiously providing it. I’m happy to oblige them because that’s what I do; support rebellion. I don’t incite it, I don’t have to; it incites itself. Then, if it happens to seek me out, in book or in person, I’m able to provide what it needs. I have to sugarcoat it a bit so Jolene can swallow it, but once it’s in her system, the little bastard can digest it at his leisure. It’s the same in conversation as it is in the books I write. The information in the books could be provided in a much drier form in much less space and be much less palatable. I doubt I’ve ever expressed an original thought or one that hasn’t been expressed many ways many times before. The secret’s in the sauce. The battle that is brewing within her won’t be between the little bastard and Jolene, as it may appear, but between the little bastard and Maya. Maya, on this battlefield, will be represented by fear, and the little bastard by hate. Fear vs Hate. Fear of NoSelf vs Hatred of False-Self. These are the armies facing each other on the fields of Kurukshetra. These are the forces between which Arjuna collapses. This is the one

true war of which all others are but shadows, and for which all other conflict is but a metaphor. In the short term, Maya almost always crushes the rebellion. By my estimate, her win/loss ratio is better than 100,000,000:1. By using her vast array of tricks and treats to buy, charm, misdirect, or distract potential rebels, she keeps them too happy, sad, engrossed or content to move, easily and effectively precluding an uprising before it gets much past the stage of mild discontent. In the long term, however, the overthrow of Maya is certain. Truth is and delusion isn’t. Ultimately, duality is an artificial construct and when it’s gone, truth is what remains. Viewed this way, the idea that Maya is evil, that delusion is negative, that the dreamstate is a prison, or that the dualistic universe is anything other than the grandest and most wonderful of all blessings is laughably absurd. Why hate Maya? Where would you be without her? Jolene herself is only vaguely aware that this battle brews within her. In a way, she’s just an innocent bystander caught between two massing armies. Of course, the rebels are just a small band of peasants with pitchforks at this stage, but they’re getting their act together. They’ve convinced Jolene to make this trip to see me, and they’ve managed to get the attention of a well-placed sympathizer. Not bad. Of course, you can just say that the little bastard is a part of Jolene. That’s true. But you can also say that the little bastard will be the death of Jolene. That’s true too. Death & Discrimination “You and I, Jolene, we’re about to get on a helicopter; a flying deathtrap. I should tell you, the pilot is drunk and grossly overweight. His wife just left him and took the kids. I saw him blubbering in the bathroom, taking pills.” She giggles. “We could be dead a few minutes from now. You remember I mentioned in the book some advice I gave a guy from a Billy Jack movie?” “The Trial of Billy Jack,” she corrects me. “I saw that too. If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, how much would this really matter? That was the question.” “That’s absolution. Pre-absolution. That’s what death is, guaranteed absolution; freedom and forgiveness all in one. If you understand the fact of your own death, that it’s always here with you and that it’s a certainty, then you’re free. That’s liberation; knowing that nothing is yours or can be yours, knowing that you have

nothing to lose. Other people push death away, deny it, but we don’t have that luxury. We have to pull death close, embrace it, carry it in our hearts and minds. I don’t mean like a college kid getting stoned and having a one-night stand with existentialism, I mean like something you carry in your pocket and always have one hand on. There are two kinds of people in the world, make-believe people and serious people. You’re a serious person Jolene, that’s what you’re becoming. You’re in the game now and you have to play by the rules.” “You always say that; a serious person. What does that mean?” “Focus. It’s all about focus. You have to learn to be an utter failure in ninety-nine percent of your life. You can accept that because you’re not a failure in the one part that matters. You have to jettison all sub-identities. Be a bad person, a bad citizen. Stop shaping yourself to the world. Shape yourself to your task and let the world despise you or, preferably, forget about you. You want to be a good citizen? Vote? Study issues?” She ponders and nods. “Fuck it. Be a crappy citizen. Better, don’t be a citizen at all. Simply abandon that identity. Chop it off. You want to be a good daughter? Friend? Sister? Wife someday? Mother? Forget it. Let it all go. Simply cut away all these anchors. All opinions you have of yourself are like the timbers of a false structure. All must go. All will go. The process has begun. The less you resist, the easier it will be.” She seems overwhelmed by this, as well she should. It’s seldom advisable to look more than one step ahead. Even the step after the next will always appear ridiculously impossible. But right now Jolene is staring at the First Step and the fact that she hasn’t been rendered catatonic by the view is a testament to her honesty and resolve. As I’ve pointed out before, this is where people can break. “This is where it’s all going anyway. You have this whole life; your home and your schools and community and all that, everything you’ve done, everything you are, the future that was laid out before you, but all that has to be released for you to go on. And it will be. All your choices have already been made. You don’t choose whether to let it all go, only whether or not to struggle against the process, and the thing that makes an easier transition possible is death. These false layers are like your skin. It can be torn away slowly, with excruciating pain, or you can just slough it off like a snake, layer after layer, just letting it all fall away. The way to do that, to

allow the process rather than battle it, is to embrace your own death. Keep one hand on your death and fight your battles with the other.” “I don’t have any choice in all this? I don’t have any freedom?” “Freedom? I don’t know what that means; it’s just a concept word. Freedom isn’t a thing itself, it’s an incomplete idea. You have to be free from something. What do you want to be free from?” “How about this whole thing? This whole process? What if I don’t want to do it? What if I just want to make the whole thing stop and go back to having a normal life?” I pause to give her time to breathe. “Okay.” “Okay? What does okay mean?” “It means okay. Store this conversation for later. I’m not your teacher, you know. I’m someone just like you, except I’ve already finished something you’re just starting. If you want to learn about trying to turn back, try to turn back.” She releases a mighty sigh. “I don’t know what I want.” “You want to attach,” I tell her. “That’s the urge that brought you here. You want to join up with people, a group, be a part of something, something big and safe and respectable. You sense yourself spinning off into oblivion and you’re clawing desperately to grab ahold of something. This is a very powerful urge and pretty much everyone succumbs to it. That’s the big trap, the one that pulls us in and spares us from the paradigm shift, the point of no return, the First Step. Does this all sound right to you?” “I guess.” I wait. “Yes.”

This was touched upon in Damnedest. We’re all treading water in a shoreless sea and we huddle together into groups to convince ourselves that our situation is other than it is. That’s make-believe. Serious people want to confront the real situation. To do that they have to leave the group and stop treading water, surrender to the inevitable rather than live a life of pointless struggle. They have to go off by themselves and allow themselves to sink. This is the point no one goes beyond. This is what everyone lives in denial of; what they must, at all costs, stay turned away from. The emperor has no clothes. Obviously. Anyone who opens their eyes and looks will see. But for this whole dreamstate deal to work, people have to see clothes. It doesn’t matter what the clothes look like, but they can’t see naked. This is what Maya must work against; the plain truth. What does she have to do to keep people from seeing the obvious? Baffle them with bullshit. Judeo-Christian bullshit, Hindu bullshit, Buddhist bullshit, New Age bullshit, they’re all just varieties of agnosticism and they all result in exactly same thing: Spiritual Embafflement. It’s that simple. The emperor has no clothes. It’s all just make-believe. When we want to stop playing make-believe, we become serious people. Of course, everyone sinks alone anyway, but the serious person can’t stand the lie of pretending the sea isn’t shoreless or that the darkness isn’t absolute or that death isn’t always a breath away. The urge to attach is the survival urge; the urge not to drown, not to sink into the blackness. I stop walking and look at her. “It’s natural to panic,” I say, “and that’s what you’re doing now. That’s what all this trying to hook up is about. You’re in a life or death struggle to survive and my job is to help you die.” “Is that what you’ve been doing? Helping me die?” “Indirectly. I’ve been trying to help you grab onto something so that you can see for yourself that it can’t be done. The process works, it doesn’t need me or anyone else. Now you’re starting to see that it’s no longer possible to attach. You’re chasing mirages in a desert. Everything you try to grab at disappears. You can’t grab

anything because there’s nothing to grab. Maybe you think you can grab onto me, but that won’t work either. You want a friend? A companion? Let death be your companion. That’s the one thing you really have, the one thing that’s really yours, that no one can take away.” Her expression is taut, her eyes locked on mine. No teary eyes or trembling lips. No young girl pout or smirk. A warrior is emerging. There will soon be a power shift in Jolene. Rebel forces will overthrow the old regime. A new constitution will be imposed and the excesses and frivolities of the make-believe regime will be swept away. A new government will assume control and impose martial law and a wartime constitution that has no place for anything but the machinery of destruction. Identity will wither. Preferences will fade. Relationships will be abandoned. Love itself will be forgotten. That’s the First Step and, for Jolene, it’s coming soon. “You’re going to tough places. You’re in for a whole different type of life than you see people living around you. You’re getting a glimpse now of what loneliness looks like—no, not loneliness, aloneness—and there’s plenty more ahead. But this too shall pass.” She looks down and nods. “This too shall pass,” she repeats. “The pain of the transition will pass, not the aloneness. The aloneness actually becomes very comfortable.” I lift her chin. “You have to go beyond the place where death is a morbid and evil thing. It’s about liberation, not at the end of life, but during, when it matters. Now. Look up. Look at me. I am happy to die at any time. Makes no difference to me. Now, later, whatever. I love the fact of my death; it’s what has made my life possible. It’s how I’ve known what my life was and what to do with it. If I knew that helicopter was going to crash tonight I’d step aboard with a joyous and grateful heart.” We walk for awhile in silence. This is heavy stuff to be sharing with a teenager who has her whole life ahead of her and shouldn’t have to even consider her own mortality for many decades, but Jolene isn’t normal. She’s getting in on the game, and the game has rules. “Your life will be a war,” I tell her in a soft tone. “It already is. People hate war because they fear death, but death is your best and most certain friend. Not me, not the Tibetans or the Japanese or some pop guru or coffeehouse mystic-in-training.

This is what you came here to learn. It seems strange to lecture a beautiful young girl about death, but you’re not just a beautiful young girl, are you? You’re something else. That’s what you’re finding out now, isn’t it?” “I don’t think I can really do it.” “You are doing it. This is it. One step at a time.” “I’m scared,” she says. “Of what?” She thinks about it. “I don’t know.” “Good. Find out. That’s how you know where to go. Follow the fear. Go into it and light it up. Inside your fear is the next door, the next thing holding you in. Let fear be your guide.” She wraps herself around my arm as we continue to walk. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We go in and sign some stuff as they crank up the comfortable executive chopper outside on the pad. Jolene sees that the pilot is quite trim, handsome and appears emotionally stable. She’s thrilled by everything, which makes it thrilling for me. When we’re standing outside waiting to be waved aboard, Jolene is hanging comfortably on my arm. She tiptoes up and speaks in my ear. “It’s such a pretty night,” she says. “I hope we don’t crash.” I laugh and smile down at her. “No way you’re getting off that easy.” * * * Bonus Content from

Spiritual Warfare * * * I, Witness With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. Henry David Thoreau It’s early evening, still light. Sheila, my hard-up-for-work local ex-pat slash retired Social Studies teacher slash affordable personal assistant slash humorless Christian lady, has gone off to make her husband some dinner. A couple of other people have come and gone. The place is settling into its evening groove. Lisa and Maggie appear, as they often do around this time. We all say our hellos and I keep working at my laptop. Lisa relaxes out by the pool and Maggie takes a seat at the table with me. She starts pulling things out of her student’s backpack; water bottle, notebook, pen. She goes to work quietly and no one says anything for half an hour when Maggie asks a question. “Can I have a technique?” I look up.

“You don’t like the autolysis?” I ask. “Yeah, I’m trying to do that. I have an online diary where I try to do spiritual stuff. I don’t think my class will be too thrilled with a diary, though. Got any others?” “Techniques?” “Yeah.” I’ve been waiting for someone to say something so I could take a break. I save my work and sit back. Maggie and I have gotten the hang of each other in the last month. She’s taken several cracks at trying to interview me, but it hasn’t been going well. All her questions manage to do is demonstrate that they don’t really apply to me. That’s interesting for the first few, but when it turns out that the answer to every question isn’t an answer but an explanation of why the question doesn’t apply, it gets tedious for everyone. Other questions would require such long-winded answers and defining of terms as to not be worth the bother. My most common answer is “Try the next one.” She has stuck with it though, and keeps coming back to try a different approach. She gets half an hour a week for this activity and, as promised, her mom, Lisa, and her grandpa, Frank, help her, but so far I don’t think she has anything more exciting for her school report than her online autolysis diary. The questions they’ve come up with so far have been stock questions from a variety of standard personality tests designed to determine whether the respondents were depressed, employable, addicted, and so forth. I’ll provide a few short samples here to illustrate: Q: When you have disagreements with people, do you raise your voice? A: I hope not. I live in a state of profound disagreement with everyone about everything. I’d never stop screaming. Q: Do you consciously avoid people who have problems? A: Ego is the only problem I recognize as such, and yes, I consciously avoid people who have it. Q: Are you proud of your accomplishments?

A: I don’t possess the thing that experiences pride. I’m satisfied that I’ve performed my function adequately, that’s about it. Q: Is there a private side to your thoughts that you don’t generally share with others? A: It’s not a side I don’t share but the fuller natural expression. The awakened state could easily be misinterpreted as psychotic, monstrous, or evil, especially by the lazier-minded of observers. The real monster in the sleeping dreamstate is the heretic, so the key to longevity in this business is not inciting the gentle townsfolk to take up torches and pitchforks against you. Q: Do you always get your way? Sometimes? Never? A: Always. How things go is how I want them to go and how I want them to go is how they go. I am in alignment. Q: Do you like being you? A: I wouldn’t if I was, but I’m not so I do. There were dozens of questions, some of which provoked long, circuitous responses, others of which had to be rejected because they were so distinctly inapplicable. A few were pretty good, but what it all mostly amounted to was an indepth look at the awakened state and there’s no point in detailing that to any great degree. This is a journey to be taken, not studied. Having a well-informed understanding of what fire looks and feels like is kind of silly when you can just see it and feel it for yourself. I return to Maggie’s request for a technique. “How about witnessing?” I ask her. “Okay,” she writes the word down and looks up. “Witnessing what?” “Yourself.” “Okay, how do I do that?”

“It’s what you’re doing right now. You’re witnessing me, right? You’re observing my external character.” “Um, yes, I guess so.” “Now do the same thing but with yourself instead of me.” “But I can’t see me.” “You can see you from the other side, the inside. Best seat in the house.” “Oh,” she says, sounding a bit unthrilled. “Why is witnessing good?” “Is this for your class or for you?” “I don’t know. Maybe both. I think me.” “Okay. Ultimately, the only spiritual practice is observation; seeing things the way they really are. That’s what Spiritual Autolysis is; a tool to help us do that, to see more clearly, to use our brains the best we can. In witnessing, you want to take a step back from yourself so you’re not just living your life, you’re also observing it. Not in reflection, like a diary, but as it’s happening; in real time. Like right now, I’m sitting here talking with you, but I’m also in this witnessing mode of impartial observer. I am not fully in character, I’m also an audience member. I’m aware that I’m acting on a stage and I am, somewhat disinterestedly, monitoring my performance.” She looks confused but eager. “How do I do it?” she asks. “Well, in a way, you’re already doing it, except your witness is kind of unfocused. She’s bored, hungry, aggravated, muffled. You want to bring her into focus, sit her down and have her pay attention.” “Her? Her who?” “The little voice in the back of your mind. You know what it’s like when you’re bored, and in the back of your mind you’re thinking about something else? You’re not fully present, your mind is somewhere else; wandering, daydreaming.”

“Yes, I do that all the time.” “You’re not doing it now, I hope.” She giggles. “No sir.” “Would you tell me if you were?” She starts to answer with an automatic denial but bites her lip instead. “Maybe not,” she says. “Good. There are two kinds of honesty; honesty with other people and honesty with yourself. They’re separate and unrelated issues. Do what you want with other people, but make a special point of trying to be honest with yourself. Okay?” “Okay.” “Daydreaming is a very good word for it because it suggests that we’re asleep while we’re awake, which is exactly the point. We want to transfer our primary awareness out of the character we’re playing and into the actor that’s playing the character. We want to accentuate that distinction to help us stop blending the character we play with the actor playing the character. We want to take up primary residence in the actor instead of the character we’re portraying. Does that make sense?” “I don’t know. You mean like being self-conscious all the time?” “Yes, but in an impartial sense, not in a judgmental sense. When you have internal voices holding imaginary conversations or worrying that you wore the wrong blouse, those are character elements too. The actor can just sit back and watch all that. In this way you can observe yourself just like you observe anyone else, except with a better view.” “I’m not sure I can do that.” “Of course you can, it just sounds weird. There’s nothing to it except observation, awareness, vigilance. Wakefulness. First you learn to do it, to have this detached awareness; you do it consciously, a little at a time, just to get the hang of it. Practice witnessing other people to get the idea. Watch them, wonder about them,

deconstruct and reverse-engineer them, then just watch yourself the way you’ve been watching others. Then you start doing it more and more until it becomes second nature and you’re almost always in the witnessing mode and you see your own character from the same impersonal perspective as you see other people.” “All the time?” “Yes, but not like a conscious effort; more like a new way of being, like always being present. Most people you see are just sleepwalking through their roles, absent from their own lives. They’re fully in character and don’t know any other way.” “Like straw dogs?” she asks. “Like in the first book?” “Exactly, this is how you make that transition to being in the world but not of the world, starting right now. Most people never make the distinction between actor and character. You can see them, you can look at people and tell. If I would have met your mom a few years ago, before her change started, I would have just seen her character. Now I look at her and I see the person behind the character. It doesn’t mean she’s enlightened or even fully awake within the dreamstate, it means that she’s present.” I address myself to Lisa, out on the pool deck. “Would you agree with that?” “Yes,” she says. “Understand?” I ask Maggie. “A little,” she says. “By living unconsciously, we abdicate our personal sovereignty. That means we give responsibility for ourselves away to other people; to parents and doctors, priests and gurus, politicians and corporations. We institutionalize ourselves. We live without awareness, and that’s the breeding ground of all bad habits and addictive behaviors. When we eat without awareness, we eat too much of the wrong things and get fat and unhealthy. When we shop and spend without awareness, we dig ourselves into a financial hole we might be in for the rest of our lives. We mindlessly plop our kids down in front of a game console or a TV and the next time we look they’re diabetic little blimps.” Maggie giggles.

“Who’s to blame for weak, fat children? Unconscious parents. Who’s to blame for unconscious parents? Unconscious parents. This cycle of unconsciousness is deeply established and breaking the cycle, as your mother can tell you, can be extraordinarily difficult. That’s what she did when she uprooted you from your old life; she broke the cycle. That’s a very brave and difficult thing to do. We bury ourselves alive and if we want to get our lives back we have to dig ourselves out. That’s what your mom is doing; digging herself out, breaking the cycle.” “Is mom going to be enlightened?” “No, she’s going to be something much better.” She takes her notes and stares at them for a moment. “Witnessing sounds pretty interesting, I guess,” Maggie says, “but what does it actually do for me?” “Good girl, good question. First, it gets you into the habit of being alert and present in your life, which is a very good habit to develop. If you don’t want to sleep your life away like most people do, you have to train yourself to wakefulness. Vigilance is the key. You should be shifting from character to actor many times every hour, in all types of situations, so that it happens smoothly and easily and doesn’t detract from your performance.” Maggie takes notes and asks for clarification now and then. I wait and proceed when she’s ready. “Second,” I say, “it trains you to disidentify from the character you’re playing. There’s a you behind the character you project out into the world, and you can’t make any progress as long as you identify with your stage persona. You’re an actor playing a character on a stage. That’s what the Bhagavad-Gita is all about.” “Like you talk about in your books,” she says. “That’s right. Arjuna forgot he was just an actor playing a character in a play, and he started panicking because he couldn’t fulfill his role. Krishna was like the director and he had to come out on stage and remind Arjuna what was going on, that he’s really just an actor playing a part.” “Lighten up, Arjuna,” she says with a shy smile.

“That’s right. Arjuna was freaking out. Krishna told him to stop being such a baby. He told Arjuna to stand up and fight, but what that really means is open your eyes and look. Krishna turned up the house lights to show Arjuna it was all just a play in a theater so Arjuna would stop whining and play his role, which he did, okay?” “Okay.” “The third thing about witnessing, the most important part and the thing that most people don’t seem to understand, is that you have to take it further than just one step back. You have to keep going with it. It’s not a passive thing, like you just sit back and observe. You don’t just observe your character, you deconstruct it. You have to be aggressive about it. This is a way of simulating the enlightened perspective, which would be useful to anyone who wants to wake themselves up from the dreamstate instead of just in it.” She starts to write and stops and looks up at me. “I have no idea what you just said,” she says. “Okay, so we’ve talked about being awake and being asleep, right? The Dreamstate Paradigm and the Awakened Paradigm?” “Yes.” “And we talked about stepping back from your character, observing the play rather than being swept up in it, right?” “Yes.” “So, what would it be like to take another step back?” “I don’t understand. How would I take another step back?” “Well, describe the person you are. The actor, not the character.” “I don’t know,” she says. “I’m a girl, I’m thirteen, I’m American.” “Keep going.”

“Where?” “You’re a human being, right? You’re alive, conscious, subject to physical laws. You exist somewhere specific in time and space. You’re living on a little planet in a big galaxy in an infinite universe. These are all aspects of who you believe yourself to be; these are your beliefs. So are all the things you think you’re not; you’re not this table, but you believe there is a table. You’re not this air, you’re not me, you’re not this solar system. That’s part of the way you define yourself as well; as this, not that.” “Are you saying I am this table?” “No, I’m saying you’re saying you’re not. You believe you and the table are different things.” “Aren’t we?” “I don’t know, are you?” She frowns at me. “Oh boy,” she says, tongue protruding in thought. “Okay, hold on a second,” she rapidly scribbles her notes. “You said you’re a girl,” I continue, “but is that true or is it just a facet of your role? You can step back from your gender and your nationality and your species and observe it the same way we talked about doing with your character.” “I can?” “Everything you think you know about yourself, no matter how real or true it might seem, is just another layer of costume. This is where we start dismantling our true belief system. Belief isn’t just about God and afterlife, it’s about everything we think we know is true. Everything we know, no matter how sure we are, is really just belief, and all beliefs are self-limiting and serve to reduce the truly infinite to the falsely finite.” She gets that down word for word. “Oh boy,” she frowns, “and what’s wrong with that again?”

“I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it.” “But none of it is true, like where we are in time and space and everything?” “Not just where you are in time and space, but time and space themselves, and duality and causality and destiny and memory and anything else you can think of. These are the things you believe are true, elements of the Dreamstate Paradigm, and you can use this witnessing process to shake that belief loose, get free of it. Step back from the year, the decade, the millennium. Step back from your house, your town, your country, your planet. Wherever you find something that you think defines or contains you in some way, you can step back from it; clinically observe your belief, your attachment. It’s all just layers of dreamstuff. You can stand outside all these things and observe them just like you do with your outward character.” “Can you give an example?” she asks. “Sure,” I say. “Do you ever watch the news on TV?” “Yes, sometimes, for school and stuff. I like it.” “Well, when you watch the news, you can look at it like it’s last week’s news, or last year’s, even though it’s today’s news.” She stares at me and chews on her pen. “Yeah,” she agrees, “and why?” “To detach, to focus your mind and vision on false attachments, to stop seeing what’s not.” She writes that down. When she finishes I give her more to write. “To distance yourself from local and national and world events, to see them as abstractions, no more personal to you than if they occurred in a different time or a different land, or on a different planet, even though they might be happening right outside your window.” She writes, pauses, writes more, stops and looks up.

“To help you see your false idea about your localized nature, to pull up the anchor that holds you in this place and time. That anchor is just another emotional attachment, just like any other.” As she writes, she shakes her head back and forth. She doesn’t understand this stuff now, but she’s writing it down so she doesn’t have to. She can process it and ask follow-ups at another session if she wants. She finishes writing and looks to see if I have more. “To pull yourself out of that part of your character that believes today’s news is more significant than yesterday’s. That’s an easy belief to see through. The news is like a snapshot of a river. It’s instantly obsolete. Ultimately, everything you think you know is really just something you believe. This is how you can dig down through your layers of belief; peel away the veils of delusion. And like I said, it’s really nothing more than observing; seeing what is by learning to unsee what’s not.” “I know that I am. That’s what you said, right? I can’t be wrong about that, can I?” “You exist, that’s all you know. Ultimately, the actor has no qualities at all except being. Not God or Jesus or Buddha can say more than that.” “But isn’t this all just make-believe?” “That’s the point. All these layers that contain and define you are the make-believe part. All you have to do is stop making the belief. We don’t do that by making new beliefs but by unmaking old ones, by seeing these attachments and beliefs and false aspects of self clearly. Whenever we are able to actually do that, to see clearly, we break the attachment. That’s how attachments are severed, by lighting them up, focusing the mind on them. They can’t survive that.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Maggie turns to her mother, who is lounging by the pool. “Is this what you’re doing, mom?” “I’m not sure,” says Lisa. “I think there’s a pretty big difference between doing it as an exercise and doing it for real. Just taking one little step is so difficult that it’s seems impossible to think past it. And I’m not talking about things like gender or

nationality, I just mean thin layers of self-image, like dependable woman and good wife. And, I have to admit, I’m doing it selectively. Trying to, anyway.” “Maybe it would have been different for you if you had learned to do witnessing when you were young,” suggests Maggie. “If someone had spoken to me like Mr. McKenna is speaking to you now, explaining the difference between character and actor, I might not have ever gotten so firmly set in my ways. I think I would have developed very differently and wouldn’t be in this period of major correction right now.” “Do you think this is something I should do personally?” Lisa sighs. “I can’t see anything wrong with being more aware, honey.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “And where are you in all this?” Maggie asks me. “Good question. You know all these layers we’ve discussed, from the character sitting here talking to you all the way back through duality and time and space?” “Yes.” “To be awake means you’re not fooled by any of that. No layers. Awake from the dream.” “Not even destiny?” “Not even destiny.” “But how do you know it wasn’t your destiny to become enlightened?” “Another good question. I don’t. I have no knowledge on the subject. I emerged from the dreamstate into the awakened state, so who knows what factors played a role? And, frankly, who cares? A leaf rushes on a stream and comes to rest on a rock. So? It doesn’t make explanations. What does it care how it got there or where its going next?”

“But you can’t go from the dreamstate into the awakened state and still have your ego?” “It would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the falseself to pass into the awakened state.” “But what does that leave?” “The logical impossibility of a selfless self; an egoless entity. As you see, I am still here in the physical world, subject to physical laws, but that’s just this body and this character. The actor is having none of it. It would even be more accurate to say the actor is dead.” “Dead?” “If a person is dead but their body is still walking around, they’re a zombie. If a person is dead but their body and personality are still walking around, they’re enlightened. I know that doesn’t seem to make any sense, but that doesn’t give me any latitude in how I represent it. It makes perfect sense to me, and to anyone else in the awakened state.” She’s shaking her head as she takes her notes. “What?” I ask. “I don’t think I can tell my class that.” * * * The New World All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore. Herman Melville

It would be two weeks after the motorcycle accident before Maya and I were able to resume our nightly visits to Frank’s poolside for a drink and a cigar. I was able to take her for short walks within a few days of spilling the bike—a cane in my left hand and a long plastic tennis ball picker-upper-and-chucker gizmo in my right— but I was advised against too much too soon. I used the opportunity to take advantage of the estate’s home theater and enormous collection of movies. The owner of the house, because of who he was in the music world, seemed to get comp’d a copy of everything put out by the major distributors; both movies and music. I thought it would be no problem to settle in to such a beautifully appointed and technologically sophisticated room for a week or two and just watch movies and musical performances, but it got old in the first hour. Reading books, watching movies and TV, listening to music; these might seem like passive activities, but they’re not. We have to bring something to them. It’s not all take and no give. We need to make a connection; a participatory bargain must be struck and kept. If we don’t supply the emotions, they’re not there. If we don’t bridge the gap, no connection gets made. This is true of everything external to us with which we form connections, of course, but for me, most everything else had already fallen away. I was kind of hoping escapist movies and music and pointless books would continue to amuse me for a few more years, but— “You’re not saying all movies and books are pointless, are you?” asks Lisa, reading over my shoulder. “Hey,” she says, “stop that! Stop typing what I’m saying— Hey!” She laughs and busies herself with papers and filling glasses and tidying up before taking her usual seat at the end of the table. I’m a task-specific person. Everything I do is either about the books, like reading, writing, and walking, or it’s down-time, like eating and sleeping. I’ve discussed this with Lisa and she agrees that it’s unusual but not unheard of. I asked her if she knew anyone like that and she said no, everyone she’s known has always been off in a hundred different directions, but that she imagined there must be intensely focused people in any given field; in the arts, in science and exploration, in sports, in business. Especially spirituality, she muses, citing several varieties of renunciate and vow-taker to make her point. I agreed with her, except I’m not passionate or even very focused. I tend more toward the lackadaisical end of the task-specific spectrum. The movies I like aren’t the movies I like, they’re the movies that serve the books. Vanilla Sky and Abre Los

Ojos, The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor, Pleasantville, Joe vs the Volcano, The Graduate and About Schmidt; these are some of my favorite movies, but I wouldn’t actually care to watch any of them. They’re favorites because I appreciate them on the level of parable. They’re useful for communicating because everyone is familiar with them, or easily could be. What are my personal movie favorites? That’s the point, I guess. I don’t have any. There is no person to have personal preferences, there’s only the task-specific person to have task-specific preferences. Books? Same thing. Moby-Dick, Leaves of Grass, 1984, Walden and few others might be reckoned my favorites, but I don’t own physical copies of them and wouldn’t pick them off the shelf if I did. I’ve made a small effort recently to reread some Kerouac, Bukowski, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Hamsun, and Camus, but instead of reading for pleasure, it feels more like I’m searching for something for my own books—the next Moby-Dick or 1984 maybe—though I don’t expect to find it. What’s the point? Why am I telling you this? It’s something I’ve been saying since the first book and it’s something that anyone interested in these books would want to understand about the awakened state. This receding out of being isn’t poetic or spiritual or blissful. Nor is it not. Jed McKenna, the character, has been zeroing out for more than twenty years and is now nearly nullified. It’s like being a hundred years old. It’s not my world anymore, even though I’m still in it. It’s not my life anymore, even though I’m still living it. And, as with a hundred year-old man, there’s nothing on the horizon. There’s nothing to hope for, nothing to look forward to, and nothing can happen to improve the situation. If I won the lottery, cured cancer and married a supermodel, things wouldn’t be looking any better. Happily, I don’t find my situation disagreeable. I don’t wish it to be other than it is. It’s natural and comfortable and fine. Maybe there are other folks writing other books that talk about this part of things, about the living reality of the truth-realized state, of what it’s like for the first two years, the first ten years, what it’s like after twenty years. Maybe there are such books; I haven’t looked in a long time. I know of some, but they’re junked up with so much God-Love-Beauty-Peace crap that you have to scrape it off with a stick. This is a featureless, unadorned, undivided state and should be related as such. There’s nothing to be said in favor of it except that it’s not a lie. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One thing that has surprised me recently was a kind of friendship I struck up with Lisa’s dad, Frank. He’s a big, gruff, no-nonsense kind of guy, at least on the exterior. Inside he’s like a modern Richard Maurice Bucke; a spiritual romantic with a vision of humanity’s future that’s both tantalizingly possible and laughably improbable. He introduced himself to me via e-mail. He began with his academic credentials, which were impressive. He then spent a few paragraphs saying nice things about me and Damnedest and Incorrect and explaining that he was retired now, a recent widower, and going a little batty and hoped that he’d found in me someone with whom he could discuss ideas he’d been formulating since the early sixties but to which he could not give full expression during his academic career. That was almost the end of it right there. I don’t correspond much. People who take this stuff seriously have no need of me or anyone else, only of finding the next question, of taking the next step, of finding the next enemy and fighting the next battle. People who don’t take this stuff seriously are invariably looking for ways to occupy and distract themselves so they don’t have to take any real steps or fight any real battles. No one needs my help with that, and they won’t have any trouble finding plenty of help elsewhere. Modern spirituality in all its forms exists to facilitate spiritual inertia: the tendency of a seeker at rest to stay at rest. I made a deal with the universe at the earliest stages of this project that I wouldn’t let myself get dragged into all that personal drama and spiritual escapism, and we’ve always understood each other very clearly on that point. But once in a while something finds a way through to me, as with Frank. I was browsing through my electronic archives, and there was his name in the From column again and again. His name stuck in my head and I eventually began reading his e-mails to see why this man had written to me thirty-one times. Once I started reading Frank’s e-mails, the first of them dating back more than a year, several features became apparent and confirmed for me that he was meant to play a role in the third book and that I should accept his standing invitation to visit his home in Mexico and make use of his library. One was his mention of the crisis his daughter was in, which had some connection to Damnedest and Incorrect. Another was his references to Orwell’s 1984 which I had just read three or four times in the previous month with almost as much pleasure as I had read Moby-Dick a few years earlier. 1984 may be the searing indictment of political oppression or the cautionary tale about personal privacy most people take it for— yeahsurefinewhatever—but like Moby-Dick, the book functions elegantly at the much more interesting level of freedom versus bondage, of truth versus delusion, of man versus Maya.

We pick up here at the point where Frank gets to the point. We humans, Mr. McKenna, are of two minds – Finite Mind and Infinite Mind. We are, more accurately, infinite beings with the capacity to live and function in a finite mode. Man’s situation, in broad overview, is that we have entirely abandoned Infinite Mind and taken up exclusive residence in Finite Mind, something akin to moving out of Versailles and into cardboard box, though the actual extremes are much further apart, more like abandoning heaven in favor of hell. In fact, exactly like that. We are self-exiles, cast out of the garden. We are the fallen angels. Man is his own Lucifer and the world is his hell. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I’m going to digress for a few paragraphs now. Biblical references trigger in me a nearly automatic reaction to reject what I’m reading and move on; a mental gag reflex of sorts. Actually, citing anyone or anything as authority strikes me as an automatic disqualifier. I like to use quotations and excerpts in support of points I’m making, but never to be believed or relied upon or trusted as sources of authority. The only authority is one’s own judgment and one’s own powers of reason and comprehension. To defer to authority is to try to skip a step, and no such thing is possible. There is nothing we need to understand that we can’t understand for ourselves. We need not abdicate our self-sovereignty to any other individual or book or institution. Nothing we need is withheld or beyond us, and no one has ever skipped a single step. The dogma and ideology of our upbringing are particularly pernicious in this regard. They color and shape our thoughts to a much greater degree than we can possibly be aware. Spiritual aspirants of any background may feel confident that they have rejected and moved past the indoctrination of their youth, but this is far more easily said than done. Anyone can rearrange the surface of their persona however and whenever they wish —change clothes and hair, change name and address, change nationality and religion—but change that occurs on the surface is merely cosmetic. It’s like painting a house a different color and calling it a different house. It’s not. It’s the same house, the same structure, the same foundation, just a different color. We can add

ornamentation, drape it in fabric, redo the landscaping, but it makes no substantive difference. If we want it to be a different house, we have to tear it down, demolish the foundation, cart off the debris, and start anew. The question is often asked: Can a person really change? The answer is yes, and this is how; demolish and rebuild. Die and be reborn. This is the only way. We can sit in therapy or meditation for decades and be the same person we were when we started. We can read every self-help book, subscribe to every magazine, join every group, take every course, make every effort, but if it’s still the same structure and the same foundation, then it doesn’t matter how we change our outward appearance and behavior, we’re still the same person. Real change happens far below the surface, at normally unplumbed and unsuspected depths, and not until we have traveled inward and downward to those depths of self can we make any claim at self-understanding or self-mastery. Until we make that journey, we are completely subject to unseen forces, like bobbing corks on a surging sea, but we don’t make that journey because it’s easier to convince ourselves that it’s our bobbing motion that causes the sea to surge. Vanity. End of digression. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In Frank’s case, I’m glad I rode out the biblical references because, through the course of thirty-one e-mails, he would paint a very intriguing picture of an alternate reality for all mankind that he called, only half in jest, the New World and sometimes, New America. And although he knew it would never come to pass and was not optimistic about man’s future, he was also kind enough to provide not only a map to New America, but the vehicle by which everyone could get there, albeit an infamous and much maligned vehicle. Somehow, everything has become flipped upside down. Not knowing of anything better, we have elevated the banalities of physical survival to the summit of human experience – eating, drinking, sensual pleasures, sex and mating, gathering – what pathetic consolations they are! Wealth, power, prestige – such words would not even appear in the vocabulary of a society of Whole Beings, but for us Halflings, they’re all we have.

Too much? Do I exaggerate? I challenge you to read on, Mr. McKenna, and see if you don’t find yourself in full agreement with me. There were two things in Frank’s first e-mails that caught my attention. The first was his assertion that everyone is wrong about everything all the time. This is a message that strikes a chord with me. It sounds really bad, but it’s actually really good. It means there aren’t millions of things wrong, just one, right at the source, and everything else that appears wrong stems from that single core error. It may not seem like it, but that’s a very pro-human, optimistic point of view, and I’m in full agreement. Another thing Frank would say in his first few e-mails that caught me, and which was at the heart of his overall message, was that we can all be Buddhas, now. Well, real soon, anyway. And he wasn’t kidding. That works for me too. Spiritual elitism in any form is an unmistakable symptom of blind-leading-the-blind syndrome. All we are is consciousness. To suggest that one being could be superior or inferior to another is to reveal complete ignorance regarding the simplest of matters. There are no second-tier people, and no informed spiritual teaching or religion would ever suggest that anyone could ultimately be superior or inferior to another. But that’s not what Frank meant. He wasn’t saying we’re all equal in consciousness. He was saying we could all be Buddhas. Now. That’s a helluva thing to say. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Finite Mind is really nothing more than the intelligence of a physical life support system that allows us to experience and explore Infinite Mind from the outside looking in. Experiencing and exploring Infinite Mind is our meaning and purpose. Finite Mind keeps the body alive and safe. It’s necessary for survival and reproduction, but survival and reproduction to what end? Survival and reproduction for the sake of more survival and reproduction? That seems absurd, but that is exactly the story of man so far. All we are doing is treading water, marching in place. It doesn’t have to be that way and those who have looked, (there are many, as you will see), have seen that it’s not meant to be. We are living empty lives, yes sir, but

we are doing so in error, and it’s an error that can be corrected. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “He’s a bit of a crackpot, I’m afraid,” says Lisa after reading the first few paragraphs. “Yes,” I agree, “he’s referred to himself at various times as,” I refer to my notes, “a cheerful crackpot, a toothless insurgent, an armchair revolutionary, a passive radical, and a pragmatic utopian.” Lisa picks up the next page and continues reading her father’s words. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Finite Mind is an integral part of the equation of Finite and Infinite – the Yin and Yang of the sentient being – but that’s not what we have. We are all Yin and no Yang. We are flat, lifeless facsimiles of the beings we are meant to be. It’s not a mere piece that we’re missing, it’s an entire dimension, the critical dimension, that we lack. When half is missing, the other half becomes the new whole, which is a different being entirely – a Halfling. We do everything in our power to deny the reality of our situation. We strain reason and credulity to deny and rationalize our condition rather than acknowledging it and correcting it. In the simplest terms, we are all meant to be Buddhas, and we all can be – everyone. And this corrupt, misbegotten, hellish earth can become a paradise – now. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “Aw geez,” groans Lisa. “Is my dad nuts?” “If he is, then I am too.” “Great, the two most important men in my life at this critical juncture are both certifiable. Are you going to put this material in the book?” “Do you know what he’s getting at?”

“I have no idea. He’s been into a lot of weird stuff, that was his big thing as a teacher. I’m afraid it sounds a little like New Age mysticism or something.” “Kind of. Mysticism for the masses. Every man, woman and child a Buddha. Cosmic consciousness. A new society emerging from the ashes of this one. That’s what he’s talking about.” “Oh God. Seriously, are you guys both crazy?” “It’s just hypothetical.” “But he’s saying it could happen.” “Oh yeah, definitely. It won’t, but it theoretically could. That’s what makes it fun. Neither of us are thinking about this as something that’s really going to happen, like activists or crusaders or something. More like two guys hollering big, sprawling ideas across a pond at each other. It’s like trying to figure out what the world would be like today if the revolution hadn’t been defeated.” “There was a revolution?” She looks up at me. “What revolution?” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The current state of humans on earth is, compared to what it could and should be, a state of being far more terrible than any writer ever has or ever will portray. We can look at the dystopian visions of Huxley, Zamyatin, Orwell, Burgess, Rand, Bradbury and others, and think about how good we have it compared to how bad it could be, but when we adopt a view that encompasses our full potential, it becomes painfully clear that no dystopian vision has ever been imagined that rivals our very own reality for inescapable nightmarish horror. Emerson was right when he said man is a god in ruins, and what could be more horrible than that? We are our own worst case scenario. It is only our ignorance that shields us, but it is that very shield of ignorance that imprisons us. Sound familiar, Mr. McKenna? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I show Lisa the folder containing hardcopies of the e-mails her father sent me. “Jesus,” she says, “he’s really pulling out all the stops.”

“I think he’s had this building up in him for forty years. It seems like all his various interests over the years kind of drove him to this ultimate conclusion. It’s really too over-the-top for any sort of academic usage, of course, but now he’s stumbled onto me and he can spill out his whole crazy theory to someone who’ll appreciate it.” “And publish it.” “That’s always been the plan.” She looks up. “Always?” “Sure, the third book can’t ignore this material. From my perspective, your father is just the ride. I was going to take the trip anyway.” “So his ideas aren’t new to you?” “There’s really only one idea; one problem and one solution.” “And the problem is?” “That we assume we’re whole beings when we’re only—” “Halflings,” she says. “Half, yes, and not the good half. Your father spent years tracing all the faults of mankind back to their source and was finally forced to an unbelievable yet undeniable conclusion. I came at it differently. I started at the unbelievable yet undeniable conclusion and worked outward. The idea that everyone is wrong about everything all the time is something I’m very comfortable with; it’s the essential nature of the dreamstate. Your father took a long time to be able to see it, but for me it’s just a matter of course.” “This all sounds so depressing.” “Does it? The only thing I know of that should depress anyone is being ego-clad, and that’s a good thing to be depressed about because then you can awaken to your situation and remedy it, as you yourself are doing. Everyone should be depressed as

hell, and if they were, then something might actually happen. The reason we’re not committing suicide by the millions is because we live in constant state of protective denial that wraps us like an invisible membrane, the price of which is a life lived at the bare minimum level of consciousness. The necessities of life are food, water, shelter, clothing, denial and distraction. Once we have those, we can turn to the business of raising the next generation of walking dead.” “You’re just a little ray of sunshine, aren’t you?” “Do you disagree?” She releases a sigh. “I guess not, it just sounds so— yuck!” “We’ve only scratched the surface of what a human being really is. To me, and to Bucke, and to your father, I think, this isn’t depressing at all. The human race isn’t defective, it’s just broken. That’s good news. It means we can fix ourselves. We don’t have to be like this. A solution can be found. Something interesting could actually happen. Anyway, that’s the basic premise of these ideas your dad and I like to play with.” “What is this potential we have?” “Infinite Mind, Inner Access. Every man, woman and child a Buddha. Free and easy access for everyone.” I look at her over the tops of my glasses. “You’re really not in the loop on all this?” “I’m really not.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Man is not plagued by countless thousands of insurmountable problems, as it certainly appears, but by one core problem from which all others radiate. The world appears dark and murky and unknowable, so we falsely assume it is dark and murky and unknowable, and we live our lives based on that unfounded assumption. Not knowing any better, we muddle along as best we can, fumbling blindly, trying to interpret the shadows and make sense of the darkness. We have some of our smartest people on the case—scientists, sages, priests, scholars, poets, artists—all striving to help us to make sense of the world, but they haven’t come up with much,

and it’s pretty clear they’re not going to. We do what we’ve been doing forever and it results in the world we have at present; a world which is in no meaningful way an improvement over the world as it has ever been, because man himself is in no meaningful way improved. But here’s the good part. Man’s potential is not dark and murky and unknowable; it is consciousness and it is infinite. We can reclaim the infinite dimension from which we are presently severed by ego, by fear. We can gain re-entry into that from which we have been cast out; garden, paradise, heaven on earth. Any and everyone can do this, or so the theory goes. It’s not reserved for the elite or the intelligent or the devout any more than sunlight is reserved for the wealthy or worthy. It doesn’t take years or decades or lifetimes. It is proven, documented, irrefutable, consistently reproducible science. It is easy, cheap, and here right now. And what it means is that no one, no matter their circumstances, no matter how high or low, how sick or well, how rich or poor, is ever more than an hour away from the more popular but non-abiding version of Spiritual Enlightenment: God-Consciousness. So now we consider a different approach to the problem. Instead of fumbling about in the darkness and desperately maintaining the self-deception that we’re so darned happy and have such a good handle on things, we can take the opposite approach. We can breed and cultivate a critical discontent. We can be aggressively pessimistic. We can look hard and see clearly. We can open ourselves to the amply-evidenced possibility that the bright end of our visible spectrum is really only a dusky twilight, that we truly are ignorant brutes, that our fairy-tale belief systems are beneath contempt, and that all our efforts at self-elevation result only in self-deception. Once armed with these few, obvious truths, we can at long last lower our defenses and say yes to fear and go into it. We can acknowledge the fact that we are just treading water, delaying the inevitable, busying ourselves with this and that petty distraction until we slip down into the darkness we’ve dedicated our lives to denying. When we trace all problems back to their single source, we find that the world appears dark and murky and unknowable not because it is, but because the lens through which it is projected/perceived is filthy. The lens is self and the filth is ego. Clean the lens and the world resolves into crystal clarity, and darkness and

murkiness are forgotten as if they never were. (Eliminate the lens altogether and you’re enlightened, but then, who is left to be enlightened?) That’s why any true and complete spiritual teaching can be fully expressed in a few words; wipe the lens, think for yourself, open your eyes, know thyself, ask Who am I? All the world’s spiritual systems are dedicated to making the most of the least, but why make the most of darkness when we can just turn on the lights? Because we are not adequately discontent. We don’t know where the switch is because we haven’t looked for it, and we haven’t looked for it because we don’t know we’re living in the dark. Frank knows that mankind dwells in a state of perpetual darkness, which is nice, but the reason we’re talking about him here is because he also knows where the light switch is. * * * The Golden Door “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus Inscribed at the Statue of Liberty Frank was heir to the vision of Dr. Richard M. Bucke, author of the 1901 book Cosmic Consciousness. He saw what Bucke saw, knew what Bucke knew, and, like Bucke, he had the intelligence, imagination and courage to put the pieces together and envision a future in which we were all granted full and unrestricted access to our own internal dimensions. On the one hand it sounds like the most obvious, desirable and natural thing in the world: Freedom. On the other hand, it sounds weirdly insane and dangerously radical: Heresy.

Frank told me that he had always planned to write Cosmic Consciousness II, but he had the opposite problem that Bucke had. Where it was probably all Bucke could do to cobble together a handful of anecdotal cases, Frank was awash in a sea of lucid firsthand accounts; some under scientific conditions, some not, but no shortage of them that were cogent and powerful and unassailable. The real issue, he explained, isn’t the one-time event, but lasting transformation; the permanent upliftment of the individual. Those cases, he said, were not so lavishly scattered, but could still be found. He didn’t want to write just another rehash of the little revolution that couldn’t. He wanted to carry on in the spirit of Bucke and approach the subject with an almost childlike gladness, with a Christmas morning excitement, as if mankind’s great present from God was sitting at our feet, wrapped in shiny paper with a perfect bow, just waiting for us to rip it open, and with it, ourselves. That was his dilemma; childlike gladness was ill-received in the halls of academia. Christmas morning excitement doesn’t pay the bills. Frank had a career to think about and a family to feed. He never wrote his book, so he’ll have to settle for a few inadequate pages in mine. I can’t make his argument for him, but the great frustration of his life was that he couldn’t either. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Frank wasn’t at Harvard or Millbrook with Leary, or in the redwoods or on the bus with Kesey, or in jail with either of them, but he was there on the fringe somewhere, just starting out in his academic career, full of big ideas and a little revolutionary zeal. He was already familiar with Bucke, Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, and that bunch. He was already immersed in the mindset of an elevated humanity and convinced of its potential for upheaval. He understood and believed in what Bucke called cosmic consciousness, but the problem, as he saw it, was one of access. What good was this wonderful faculty everyone supposedly possessed if no one could access it? What good is a door if you can’t open it and go through? “It’s not about the door or the wall or the key,” he told me during one of our evening chats, “none of that. Those only matter on this side. The point is what’s on the other side. The point is going there, being there. Then all this nonsense of doors and keys is forgotten.”

I agreed with him on that restating of the gateless gate paradox. The person who is free has no feeling of freedom any more than a person who is not on fire has a feeling of being not on fire. Freedom is a concept of the incarcerated mentality. It’s something you think about when you’re looking at windowless walls and locked doors. Once you’re through and beyond, the very concepts of captivity and freedom recede out of existence behind you. So there was Frank in the late fifties and early sixties, staring at a wall he knew was a door, but a door he didn’t know how to open. Maybe he’d been through it himself, but in selfless bodhisattva style he wanted to throw it open for everyone. “Why shouldn’t it be open?” he once asked me. “What the hell’s the point of anything else if we don’t have this?” Good question. And then, what to his wondering eyes should appear? The Golden Key. Very much a miracle and, to Frank’s way of thinking, far more important than the discovery of fire or the invention of the wheel. As with his famous Harvard counterparts, the first keys he found out about were brass and tin, but they would soon be displaced by the true Golden Key: Lysergic acid diethylamide. LSD. Instant Buddhahood. Free and easy access for everyone. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The New World. That’s what Frank called this dream of his. He thought America would be at the center of it, that this was the true freedom, and that ushering in a new era of fully realized human potential was America’s promise and responsibility. That, to him, was the American dream, the Emersonian ideal; not a car in every garage and a chicken in every pot. Frank’s New World was about a new tomorrow, not a continued downward spiral of greed, corruption, disease and stultifying mediocrity. In the same way that having a clear vision of humanity’s potential soured him on the current state of humanity, having a clear vision of America’s potential disappointed him with regard to its current state. I think this might be one of the reasons he and Isabel bought their Mexico house years ago and vacationed here and ultimately retired here. Frank was quietly disgusted with the United States of America.

He had a sad sort of disillusioned air about him. From our semi-boozy discussions I was able to form a fairly clear picture of why. Simply, he was a patriot. He loved America, but the idea of America meant something to him that the reality of America didn’t approach. It wasn’t the place or the people he had such feelings for, but the idea. He wasn’t a nationalist, he was a humanist and an idealist. He felt that America had a destiny it had failed to fulfill. He thought we were supposed to be venturing into new frontiers, not walling them off and plastering them over. He once likened his feelings for the U.S. to a son for whom one has the highest hopes and expectations, only to watch him grow into a common street thug and drug addict, beyond redemption, all potential wasted, all hope gone. He sadly echoed Lincoln’s battlefield dream that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom. “But what started out of the people, by the people and for the people,” he said, “is now of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation.” When I knew him, he still possessed a youthful dreaminess that most of us leave behind with our teens; an obstinate sort of optimism he had never outgrown. It’s a good thing he liked to drink or I might never have seen it in him. He didn’t get loud or wobbly or maudlin when he drank, just nostalgic for the idealism of his youth. And even with all that, he was not particularly sentimental. He didn’t pine for his stillborn revolution, he merely expressed a sadness for what he once glimpsed through a slightly open door; his dream of emancipation, of a liberated humanity. Every man, woman and child whole and complete. He approached it like it was an academic issue for him, but there was a lot of feeling behind his words. Words like his don’t get expressed without a lot of feeling behind them. In Bucke’s case, as in Frank’s, the words were fueled by the direct experience of a reality behind this one, and the certain knowledge that this one was flat and hollow by comparison. The direct experience of cosmic consciousness is something that can generate a lot of feeling. The rest is history. The dream is dead, murdered in its cradle. “But for a little while it was there,” Frank told me on one of those boozy nights. “We could open that door for everyone forever, or so it seemed. I still don’t know what happened. It all got away from us so fast. Well, you know the story, you’ve read the books. Here it is forty years later and look at this ridiculous world we have. What would it look like instead if that door had been kept open? What would we be like after several generations? What would that look like? It wouldn’t look like Woodstock or Haight-Ashbury. That was nothing. That was just the first few crazy

minutes of a history that was never written. The door has turned back into a wall now. Maybe it’s just as well. Maybe it’s better that people don’t know.” What a great cause to be on the losing side of. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “It doesn’t sound like my father,” Lisa said as we walked the shoreline. “I knew he liked that book, Cosmic Consciousness, but I didn’t know he had all these crazy ideas about evolution or anything.” “It seems like something a man in his position might want to keep private,” I say. “From his own family?” I don’t respond. She knows I’m not the one to ask personal questions, so when I don’t answer, she doesn’t push. “Do you agree with him?” she asks. “About what?” “About the whole thing.” “I don’t see anything to disagree with. I mean, it has the air of a nutty conspiracy theory, but I don’t see any specific error in your father’s thinking. LSD is certainly everything he said it was; the facts are in on that once you look past the rabid vilification by Maya’s Ministry of Propaganda and Disinformation. Anyone capable of looking can see that for themselves. Mankind is certainly functioning at a very marginal level of consciousness, so the only direction is up. Clearly, there’s an onthe-bus or off-the-bus element—” “So you did agree with him.” “As an exercise in dreamstate theory it was fun and it benefited the book. Beyond that—” I leave it hanging. “Beyond that, what?”

“Beyond that, nothing. Except as it serves the book, I have very little interest in the matter. Your father understood that.” “Oh, I forget,” she says sarcastically, “it’s all just a dream. Nothing is personal to you. Nothing really matters.” We walk in silence for a few minutes. “I’m sorry to be getting testy,” she says. “Say what you want. This is the time.” “Okay then, so isn’t that right? Nothing matters to you. Nothing is important to you. Nothing is good or bad or better or worse?” I know this is all very personal for her, but she’s right; nothing is personal to me. If I had to choose between an age of enlightenment and an ice age, I’d have to flip a coin. It would be like going to a theater and choosing between two movies; the elevation of mankind to the left and the extermination of mankind to the right. Both have their charms and both would make for an amusing diversion, whether in reel life or real life, but if confronted with such a choice, I’d probably decide not to see a movie and go for a walk instead. We stroll in silence for a few minutes before she speaks. “So, it was a failed revolution, the way my father saw it?” “In effect. He joked once that if you want to topple a superpower, you shouldn’t send peaceniks and flower children to do it. He wanted the door opened, that was the objective; free and easy access for everyone. It follows that the existing paradigm would be overturned, but that wasn’t his main focus.” “I keep hearing this thing about free and easy access,” she says. “For everyone,” I add. “Free and easy inner access for everyone. That’s how your dad phrased it.” “Okay, what’s that about, I mean, why phrase it that way? It seems like very deliberate wording, almost legalese.”

“Your father came up with the phrase with several things in mind. It’s very tricky to take a pro-drug position in this day and age, especially if the drug is as effectively demonized as acid, though, technically, I believe it’s an agent, not a drug. Your father sought to head off the inevitable kneejerk reactions wherever possible.” “Acid,” she winces, “Christ, I can’t believe we’re even talking about this.” “That’s the kind of reaction he meant. He wasn’t aware of any problem with LSD. He thought it was all good.” “Is it?” “I haven’t found any problem, but, as I told your dad, I wouldn’t care if I did.” “Meaning what?” “Meaning—” I pause, wanting to answer deliberately and correctly, here on the hard edge of things, “that if I were the guy in charge of making this dream come true, I’d accept a very high casualty level. Just as if I were doing it for my own liberation, I’d be very risk-tolerant. Very. It’s all just hypothetical though; the actual downside appears to be negligible.” “But he was speaking in private with you. Why such cautious language? It’s not like him to be so guarded, and you seem sympathetic to his views.” “I think he’d been writing a book in his head for decades. You might even find notes or drafts among his things. His ideas were pretty well developed. He used that particular phrasing to define a standard. He wasn’t talking about a hippie renaissance or renewed government testing or more university studies, he was talking about unrestricted access to normally unavailable dimensions of selfhood, and the criteria he settled on as a clear standard was free and easy access for everyone. LSD happens to meet that standard and nothing else does.” “Really? Nothing else?” “Your dad’s phrase is clever in that it’s very exclusionary. It excludes a lot of other drugs and agents and analogues. It also excludes other methods for achieving expanded states. For instance, there are Zen masters and meditation experts and spiritual gurus who claim that LSD is artificial and that their proprietary methods are the only true and real and lasting forms of inner access, something like that.”

“Is that a valid observation? I mean, would you know?” “I wouldn’t presume to speak for their experiences, but I would say that they had their chance and never managed anything close to your father’s stated ideal. In my opinion, free and easy access for everyone renders all religions and philosophies and spiritual teachings instantly obsolete and irrelevant, and good riddance. It puts them out of a game they were never really in.” “And LSD really does that?” “I wasn’t able to disprove it.” “And religious and spiritual groups find that threatening?” “Some, naturally. If chemical mysticism means you can drag any bum in off the street after breakfast and have him experiencing a full-blown state of God consciousness before lunch, then the rules have changed. The methods of access they’re defending require decades of devotion, dedication and privation, with no serious likelihood of success. Would you want to jump into a rowboat and start paddling across the Atlantic despite terrible hardship and struggle and the near certainty of failure, or jump on a plane and be in Paris tonight? Anyway, your dad sidestepped the entire issue by defining the standard as free and easy access for everyone. When you put it that way, you instantly sweep everyone else off the table. It doesn’t leave room for discussion or debate.” “What about the harmful effects you hear about?” “Of LSD? Neither of us were aware of any worth mentioning. Plenty of anecdotal reports, scare tactics, problems with disturbed or unbalanced people, with irresponsible usage, with use in non-conducive settings. There’s no doubt we’re talking about a very powerful substance, capable of completely revolutionizing someone’s understanding of reality in a few hours. It’s probably prudent to approach it with some respect.” “Really?” “Listen, I’m not an LSD expert or advocate, that’s not my thing at all, but I’ll say this; of the many hours I spent in your dad’s library, much of it was focused on the anti-LSD material, and I was very unimpressed. I have a very good nose for

bullshit, and the anti-LSD material reeked of it. You’re now the owner of that library so you can look into it for yourself if you’re interested, but I don’t think you’ll find much in the way of a downside to responsible LSD use except bad trips.” “But they can be pretty awful, can’t they?” “I guess so, but that seems more a factor of your own internal environment and not the agent that got you there. Your father said you can’t blame the key if you don’t like what’s on the other side of the door. “Just to be clear, your dad wasn’t talking about some new and exciting recreational activity we could add to our current list of diversionary pastimes. He wasn’t talking about escapism in the way that drugs are used in the West. He was talking about reclaiming our natural birthright, our sacred heritage. It’s a little funny, in 1984, it talks about a society of peace, brotherhood, equality that could have been created but wasn’t. ‘The earthly paradise had been discredited at exactly the moment when it became realizable.’ That’s what your dad was talking about. An earthly paradise was his vision, and it was discredited exactly at the moment when it became realizable.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We walk in silence. I think about these two versions of a transformed humanity I’ve looked at in the last few months: Bob’s view that people can make this transition on their own through techniques and realization, and Frank’s view that LSD is the key that can throw the door open for everyone. Bob’s completely unfounded views are just a load of what Brett called happy horseshit, meant to calm spiritual stirrings, and maybe turn a buck and strike a pose while doing it. Frank started with a utopian ideal based on Bucke’s book, and did the courageous thing by following the facts wherever they led. Bob’s idea is juvenile nonsense and Frank’s idea is at least plausible in theory, but what they have in common is that neither will ever come to pass. And it’s not really desirable that they should. It’s natural that we should want something better, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that we know what that would be, or that we should have it. If I had to pick a winner in this contest of views, it wouldn’t be Frank or Bob, but Lisa. Joe Banks, not Tim Leary or the Dalai Lama. One person making a break, drawing a line, that’s where the best thing in the world happens; not in groups or in societies, but in individuals.

It’s interesting to note that Bob’s views will probably be well received and that Frank’s balanced and heavily documented views would have caused him to be scorned out of his career and ostracized by society. Go Maya. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “Why were you so focused on the negative material?” Lisa asks. “Weren’t you trying to write about the golden key and the golden door and everything?” “No, not really. That was more your dad’s thing. He wanted to construct some sort of quasi-academic document that would turn the world on its head. I didn’t need to be convinced, and I’m really not that interested. What’s interesting to me is how quickly and effectively that door got slammed shut. That’s Maya at work. That’s what interests me; the raw power and cunning of fear. I’m not writing a book about how great expanded awareness is; there are plenty of those. I want to look at how great the enemy of awakening is. It’s interesting to observe Maya in people, in ego, but it’s been a real education to isolate and observe Maya’s reaction to this very potent threat to her dominion. Not thousands of years ago in a foreign land when no one wrote anything down and you have to try to unravel an absurd mythology, but a few years ago, right here, and documented from every angle to the nth degree. It’s been like this specialized branch of anthropology that focuses on understanding the ego and its fascinating talent for self-preservation. Fun for me and good for the third book. All thanks to your dad.” “I’m starting to think he really was a bit of a crackpot.” “Maybe he was, but what I found in all this is that there were hundreds of so-called visionaries in this period, the sixties, but compared to your dad they were mostly very small-thinking and short-sighted. I’m sorry your father never got to write Cosmic Consciousness II. I don’t think it would have been well-received by the world, but that would be a reflection on the world, not your father or his subject.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lisa and I have talked about where she’s going next, where her life will be taking her, who she’s going to be from now on and what it’s going to be like. She has a curiosity about her future that ranges from anxious to excited.

She’s feeling homeless, which is something she’s never felt before. She thinks the solution is to find a home, and I’m trying to help her see that the solution is getting comfortable with not having one, or with being at home everywhere. She wants to get back to where she belongs, and isn’t happy to hear that there is no such place. Her dad and I talked about this sort of transcending into homelessness with regard to LSD and kids in the sixties. How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen God? After they’ve been God? Suddenly, people were being rocketed out of their mundane realities into phantasmagorical realms of hyper-awareness, setting themselves, in the process, adrift. “Where do I go from here?” many must have asked themselves in quiet moments. “I’ve destroyed one world, so now what? Obviously I don’t go back to school to become an accountant or an engineer or a lawyer now that I know, beyond any possibility of doubt, that what my parents call life is just cheap shadowplay, so where do I go?” They needed some understanding of this new level of reality they found themselves in, some framework within which to take refuge and assimilate their transpersonal, trans-human trans-everything experiences, and they weren’t finding any manuals of higher consciousness on mom and dad’s bookshelves. They were catapulted so far beyond the paradigm of their parents that they were like a new and unprecedented order of beings. Leary’s admonition to turn on, tune in, and drop out was fine as far as it went, which was exactly nowhere. Dropping out was the easy part. The hard part is that when you drop out of one thing, you have to drop into another, and there was no other thing. City parks and crash-pads and Volkswagen buses do not make for an inhabitable paradigm. A new social strata of indigent mystics and sidewalk gurus was certain to not long endure. “It’s a completely unique event in our history,” said Frank. “Where else can you see anything remotely close in the annals of human consciousness? The genie got out of the bottle and for a little while free and easy access for everyone was a reality. Not for long, but it was there, an emerging new religion with an authentic sacrament instead of a symbolic sacrament. But then the genie got crammed back into the bottle and the bottle was labeled poison and buried so deep it might be many generations before it’s seen again.” One of the questions Frank and I played with was, Where are they now? Now we’re looking back at the whole thing from the perspective of time, where did they all go?

Back to the farm, we concluded. Where else? They had to break back into the cuckoo’s nest, reintegrate themselves into the combine, reassimilate themselves with the herd. Like Cypher, the traitor in The Matrix, they had to weasel their ways back in and make arrangements for their memories. Frank talked to me for two hours one night about memory and about how we are all historical revisionists in our own heads. I remember that at the time it sounded like the mutability of the past Big Brother was able to impose on the citizens of Oceania. Maybe Maya has the same thing, I remember thinking, or maybe I only think I remember thinking it. Not all of the godlings underwent repatriation. Some found comfort and community in smaller satellite herds loosely united under the catch-all New Age banner, but that’s just a petty vanity; all sheep in herd orbit, no matter how far out, are still part of the herd. Maya is the good shepherd, and few if any head were lost. “So here we are,” said Frank, “four decades later looking back on it, and what do we see? A few signs of impact in the old world, a few secondary revolutions— feminist, sexual, racial—but no new world ever sprang up out of it. It never took root. It never had a chance.” * * * Visionary Goofballs Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather. Bill Hicks Bucke and Frank were both a bit goofy in their own ways. Bucke envisioned a future of socialism, personal aircraft, the end of cities, and eventually, a race of morally superior people possessed of the cosmic sense, which he expected to develop in man over time, like color perception, becoming a race-wide faculty over a few thousand years.

Bucke was a friend and admirer of Whitman, but never went further than that. He never most honored Whitman’s style: He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher. That’s the finger pointing at the moon thing. Bucke couldn’t honor Whitman’s style that way; he could only praise and admire the finger. Whitman was saying to the reader, to Bucke, to us, this is your journey: Not I – not anyone else, can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself. Neither Bucke nor Frank ever traveled that road. They both stopped. They both dug in and became self-appointed spokesmen for a journey they never took, making optimistic guesses and extrapolating futures they would never see. Were either of them right? I don’t know. Ask me again in a few thousand years. Although neither of them knew it, the question they were trying to answer boils down to this: Can fear be replaced as the binding agent that holds the dreamstate together? Is there another core emotion of sufficient intensity to keep this whole thing lit up? And both these men, in their different ways, and without really understanding the question, said yes. Me, I don’t think so. I know Maya pretty well and I don’t see her ever losing more than the occasional stray. A species-wide transformation is a pretty idea, but we have little cause for optimism and plenty for pessimism. It’s nice to think we could elevate ourselves, and it’s fun to dabble in theoretical scenarios, but the reality is that man will never evolve or transcend or develop beyond his past and present level. If that sounds like a bad thing to us, if Maya sounds like a force of evil, if the terms by which man lives on this planet seem too oppressive or restrictive, then we might do well to take a step back and reevaluate the situation. Where are we? What is this place? Is it a prison to be despised or an amusement park to be explored and enjoyed? Is ego a hideous affliction? Or is it simply the vehicle that allows us to come out and play? When the choice is between no-self and false-self, false-self starts looking pretty good, and despising and demonizing it starts to seem pretty ungrateful. Maybe there are other planes of existence and maybe the inhabitants of those higher planes are of a more evolved, less benighted nature. Maybe this whole

physical/human plane is just the coarsest level of self-awareness, a kindergarten in that larger, subtler dreamscape, but that’s not what Frank or Bucke were talking about and, beyond the obvious mechanism-of-denial reasons, I don’t know why anyone would care about the extended forecast anyway. Life isn’t down the road in the distant mists of time. The game is afoot, here, now, on the physical/human plane. Most people get through the day by believing that if they don’t break too many rules too much, they automatically get promoted up through the ranks; be it one life and straight to the top or a climb of many smaller steps. This comes to us from Maya’s Ministry of Deferral & Procrastination, which promotes a doctrine of plausible denial and applied non-aggression, and where the motto is Rock the Cradle, Not the Boat. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lily Tomlin said the problem with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat. To my way of thinking, the problem with being in the human race is that even if you win, you’re still a human. Let’s pretend for a moment that we’re not, as a race, a mere tweak or two from perfection, but a cataclysmic makeover away. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the way humanity is now is nowhere close to what it could be, that we’re nowhere in the vicinity of what we might become, that we’re morbidly mired at the shitty end of the potential spectrum. It certainly seems that the light of human consciousness is at its lowest possible setting and cannot be further dimmed, so at least there’s cause for optimism: it can’t get any worse. Maybe it just has to get a little brighter, just a smidge, and then some positive tipping point is reached and the whole thing lights up like day and these dark ages are only remembered for their slow-dissolving steel and concrete. Man can crawl out of the lightless tarpits of religion and spirituality the way our distant ancestors crawled out of the oceans and some version of Frank’s crazy-ass New World could evolve, populated by integrated, empathetic/sympathetic, awake/aware, whole-brained, fully conscious, open-eyed, non-fear-based humans. I doubt it, but if it ever happens, it will only happen by getting people through that door that Frank saw, and there’s no doubt that, in all of known creation, the only thing that might be called the Golden Key, that might offer free and easy access for everyone, is LSD. That is one of the two important lessons we can take from this psychedelic episode in our history, the sixties. We are, without a doubt, at the shitty end of the potential spectrum. Every Tom, Dick and Mary got to travel the rest of the spectrum and they took good notes and that is what we learned. You don’t have to be “on the bus” to understand this, you only have to visit any reasonably well-stocked library or bookstore and take an hour to see it for yourself; there are higher ranges of

consciousness open to us, and from there, the narrow range in which we live and die barely registers as consciousness at all. My assistants and proofreaders warn me that people don’t like to hear themselves portrayed so negatively. That surprises me. I would think that most folks, if they took a minute to sit down and really think about it, would blubber in joyous relief to find out that what they’d been calling life was really just the most meager level of subsistence and that there were infinitudes more to this whole thing then they’d been led to believe. Just to give you the merest idea, think of all the time and effort and energy you put into projecting yourself into the world, into playing your role, into being you. Then, once you have some appreciation for what’s involved, imagine not doing it anymore. Imagine if you could stop being you and just be. That’s kind of a sideways way of saying something really central to this whole subject. How would your life be different if you didn’t have to keep conjuring yourself into existence every moment and just existed? And, on the other side of this coin, there’s your obligation to reflect others back to them as they reflect you back to you. What if you broke this social compact of mutual ego-assurance? What if you could just drop these two all-consuming activities? What if you withdrew all energy from the fictional character you play? And now, what if everyone did it? What then? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The point Frank sought to impress upon me again and again, the point that he seemed to find most incomprehensible, most galling, was that those higher ranges of consciousness being denied to us are the very essence of who and what we are. They are our infinite and unbounded selves, and they are closed off to us at the very moment in history when they first became open to us. “That’s all any of this is about,” he’d often repeat. “Every culture in history has had their method of accessing the great within, but it was always restricted to the few, the elite, renunciates, shamans and the like, but now, for the first time ever, we have it in our power to make it freely and easily available to everyone—everyone. The most important event in the history of man and what happens? The whole world rises up against it.”

Leaving us with the crop of methods we currently have, methods that Maya doesn’t bother clamping down on because they pose no threat; that are, in fact, so ineffectual for their stated usage and so perfectly suited to the perpetuation of delusion, that we can know without doubt from whose lineage they come down to us. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Which brings us to the more important lesson the sixties have to offer: Maya. As impressive as we see she is when we bother to look, we are only seeing her at her most relaxed state. Facing no serious threat, she operates at only a minimal readiness level. She is like a sleeping giant who can do her job without being any more alert than those over whom she watches. But when an escape attempt is launched that has the potential to set the captives free in any serious numbers, an event we’ve only seen once, then the attentive observer is rewarded with a glimpse of what Maya is really capable; a very impressive sight. Bringing perhaps only a fraction of her offensive might to bear, she slammed the door shut, sealed it tight, plastered it out of visible existence, and labeled the area radioactively contaminated so the herd steers well clear, effectively turning humanity rabidly against the only thing that might, with a straight face, be called a practicable road to salvation. LSD provided the one and only serious offensive assault against Maya and without much fuss or bother she rose to the challenge and quelled the uprising, swatting it like a bug and settling back into her light doze. She villanized, demonized, and criminalized the entheogenic class of substances so effectively that here we are now, a few decades later, and all that can really be said of mankind’s one chance for liberation is that a hole in the wall was brought to the attention of the warden, and promptly repaired. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A young country with boundless idealism, poetic vision, and virtually limitless wealth, burning with words like freedom and expansion and exploration, with phrases like all men are created equal, and inalienable rights, and pursuit of happiness; that’s a place, said Frank, where good things could happen. “What is a Declaration of Independence itself except an act of rebellion?” he asked. “It’s a revolutionary decree; a response to what it calls an absolute tyranny. It’s a declaration of war. Where’s that spirit today? It doesn’t exist. I’m proof of that. If I never stood up and said something, who will? We are a vanquished, broken people. We are slaves.”

That’s how he talked sometimes. “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends,” he continued, lifting his glass, “it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.” “Declaration of Independence?” I asked. He nodded solemnly with a muffled belch. Revolution is the overthrow of a tyrannical oppressor. Whether individually or collectively, it is the ultimate expression of discontent. Revolutions start small and rely perforce on guerrilla tactics. They begin with treasonous plotters meeting in barns and back rooms. The enemy faced by these uppity peasants consists of established governments, standing armies, courts, established order, fearful family, the press, and an intelligence apparatus capable of rooting out insurgency before it moves beyond the pitchfork and birdgun stage. Of course, when it’s just a conflict between oppressed citizens and their oppressive governments, or between inmates and prison staff, that’s merely the dreamstate shadow of the real process of revolution; the personal declaration of independence, the individual bid for freedom, the one true war of which all others are but shadows. If you were the tyrannical oppressor, it would be your job to avoid an uprising and maintain order. That’s not really very difficult because we, the people, actually want to be oppressed. We just don’t want it too get so uncomfortable that we’d prefer death to continued oppression. The art and science of tyrannical oppression is to bind the spirit, but not so much that death becomes preferable to continued bondage. As America’s founding fathers knew, it’s easy to keep people from choosing death: “…all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.” U.S. Declaration of Independence ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In Frank’s entheogenic revolution, however, it’s not so much a matter of the current regime being insufferably oppressive as it is of the new regime being so mindbogglingly superior that present conditions seem like life in a coffin by comparison. That’s why the little revolution of the sixties sputtered and died; not because Maya is invincible, but because desire is a very weak agent of change. And if we can understand why that doomed it from the start, we can also understand why any attempt to launch a personal revolution pulled by desire rather than pushed by insufferable discontent is similarly doomed, and why Frank’s revolution failed and Lisa’s succeeded. Personal revolution is fueled by emotional energy of the purest intensity. That intensity comes from focus and that kind of focused emotional energy doesn’t look like love or tranquility or compassion. It looks like seething rage or severe psychosis. It’s an ugly fact of an ugly business, but that’s how it works. Suicidal discontent; that’s how revolutions are won and that’s why they so seldom are. Rockets aren’t launched into space on chanting and prayers, and escaping the ego’s gravity requires an equivalent amount of explosive force. We have to take all the emotional energy we normally blast out in a thousand directions to keep our dreamstate characters animated and focus it on a single point. It’s all or nothing. This is the kind of stuff Frank and I discussed now and then. He’d spent his life quietly wondering where his beloved revolution went wrong, how the LSD-based transcendence of the species he’d watched unfolding ended up failing so miserably. I know he came to understand the whole thing better by discussing it with me, but I don’t think that made him any happier about it. The way he saw it, the war was over, the good guys lost, and history is written by the winners. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Standard religions and belief systems, whether orthodox or unorthodox, mainstream or whacko, serve to keep the herd together and heading slowly nowhere in an orderly manner. Whether we believe in something or believe we don’t believe in anything makes no difference. All beliefs are the same belief. There is only the herd. There are always those who aren’t content within the herd and seek something more than mindless plodding and grazing and humping. They peel themselves away and form subherds that travel apart but alongside, independent in belief and appearance only. There are also the occasional stragglers and strays, but the trick to keeping loose stock with the herd, the good shepherd knows, is to let them stray. They won’t

go far. Where would they go? What is commonly thought of as the herd is really just the core herd. There is a larger, more scattered herd that becomes visible as our elevation increases and our perspective broadens. Those at the outermost fringes, to the sides or far out front, are no less a part of the herd than those at the heart, they’re just indulging in a bit of egoic self-gratification. Draw back far enough and we see that everyone is plodding in the same aimless direction at the same shuffling pace, and that the very idea of a radical or a revolutionary or a bold explorer is nothing more than a petty conceit. There are no explorers, there is no spirit of exploration, there is no courage, there is no freedom or love of freedom. There is only the herd. Every once in a while a single beast does leave the herd. Never a group or even a pair. Where there’s more than one, there’s the herd. They only go, when they go, one at a time. And where do they go? Over the edge, of course. Where else? There are only two choices; the herd and over the edge. There is only the herd. And there is no herd. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I’ve said that when I was young, I never found anyone I would have wanted to be like. Not only didn’t I know anyone, I didn’t know of anyone. There was no success that looked like success to me, there was no accomplishment that seemed worth the bother. The only thing I ever remember thinking might be a good way to spend a life was as a failed poet; kind of like the village idiot but without the civic responsibilities. The idea of being a successful poet held no charm, but being a failure as a poet had a nice feel to it. A one-man revolution; certain to fail, but for a good cause. Anyway, as I think about it now, I think I like what Frank and Bucke did—or almost did, or tried to do, or thought about doing—with their lives and their wise, foolish, impossible dreams. They were failed poets in the way that I mean it, and if my life had gone another way I think I would have been content to be like them. * * *

Nothing Forever: A Post-Apocalyptic Lightmare Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time. AE Houseman Although my primary epiphany could be summed up as Truth Exists, it was actually much more complicated than that. The flipside of Truth Exists is This Ain’t It. That primary epiphany detonated in my mind like a smart bomb and left me all alone on a desert planet that had only that morning been teeming with people and problems and emotions and history and drama and a million other things that were instantly reduced to fine ash by the spiritual apocalypse that incinerated my world in a brilliant flash of light. After the blast, I found myself stumbling dazed and shell-shocked though a postapocalyptic landscape undreamed of by science fiction writers. Civilizations were reduced to windless deserts. Cities I now saw as blackened craters and people as shadows of smoke. What had been Earth, Home, Humanity, Family, Life, could now be most aptly called Nothing Forever. How did I get here? Here where? Here what? It can’t be what it appears to be, (though I know it is). It can’t really be Nothing Forever, (though I know it can’t not be). There must be something somewhere, (though I know there’s not). I have to see. I have to look for myself. Where are the people? The cities? Where are the churches? Where are the statues and icons? Where are the great philosophies and belief systems? Surely they must have survived. Who am I to be here alone? Where are all the smart ones? The ones who seemed so serious, so stable and deeply-rooted and tightly wrapped? So real? Where are the ones with the strong beliefs and complex philosophies? Why aren’t they here? Where are the heroes? This is a place where there should be heroic men and women. The best of the best should be here, the smartest, the bravest, the most devout, the truest. Where are they? Where are the signs that they’ve been here? It

can’t just be me. There must be others. I couldn’t believe I was all alone on this desolate planet, so I went off to have a look around. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I went to philosophy. What had been entire libraries of man’s collected wisdom, including all that ancient Greek stuff and all those Europeans from the last few centuries with their humongous brains and their gigantic thoughts. Where was all that now? Gone as if it never was. Washed away like sandcastles on the beach. All that was left where I expected to find Great Minds and Great Thoughts was a blueprint for a bomb like the one that had done this to my world: Cogito Ergo Sum. So, I wondered, where was René Descartes? I should be able to find more of him than those three words. But no. I discovered that even the guy who created such a bomb didn’t know what it really was or what it could really do; he built the bomb but he never set it off in his own life. I went to religion. Any religion, denomination, cult or sect would do; anything that was still standing in this flattened world would be a welcome and amazing sight, but nothing was. All the books and statues and fancy clothes and beautiful buildings were vaporized. Nowhere was one stone left on top of another. I was stunned, but not surprised. I went to the occult and the New Age, to spirituality and Eastern thought. By this time my eyes had become well-adjusted to the bright light of this new world and I could fully absorb in a moment what it might once have taken years to see. There were others like me, I saw, but few. They were easier to make out now that all the pretenders had been vaporized. Still, I wasn’t there to learn or to acquire or to master anything. I had no desire to become a student. This wasn’t a scholarly or theological pursuit. I had no need for a vehicle. I wasn’t curious about teachings and philosophies and beliefs beyond the initial assessment of whether or not they survived the blast. I was just looking to see if there was anything still standing, and there wasn’t much. Not nothing, but not much. As long as I was in the neighborhood I looked in on Buddhism, but all that remained was the diamond of Zen under an ash mountain of faux-Zen. I was interested to finally see it in clarity, but real Zen is just another name for the bomb, and there was nothing left to blow up. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All that scorched-earth wandering wasn’t the end, it was just the beginning. I still had my own personal deconstruction to do, which is how I spent almost the next two years, until I got to a place called Done. The external searching is only one part of the story. The other part is the internal part; the slow, painful sloughing away of self, layer by layer, piece by piece. Spiritual self-debridement. Some layers of selfhood just fall away, some tear off in long strips or flabby hunks, and some have to be meticulously, pain-stakingly; surgically removed. Everything I had become in decades of life I now had to unbecome. All I really was was belief, so everything I believed I now had to unbelieve. My new world was cold and bright and honest, but my old mind was still full of a lifetime’s accumulation of belief and opinion and false knowledge and emotional attachment—all the noxious debris and toxic waste that make up the ego —and it all had to go. That’s a process and it takes time. The world might be annihilated in a flash, but self takes a little longer to burn away. There’s no bomb for that. There’s no pretty Latin phrase or Sanskrit mantra that annihilates self quickly or painlessly. There’s no realization or insight or epiphany that wipes away the false self in a flash. Those who claim to have awakened in a flash are the most deluded of all. Then it was time for the mountain to be a mountain again. I spent the next ten years trying to make sense of this new world; a non-world in which a non-I nevertheless seemed to reside. The waking dreamstate. It was like the world had turned from hard solidity into shimmering mirage. I could still see the world I had always known, but I could not find its substance. Whatever I reached out to touch, my hand passed through. Whatever I thought about dissolved in my mind. Whoever I looked at, I saw through like vapor, myself included. I looked at my own character, and it was like a face you see in a cloud for a second before it’s gone. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My reality now is the awakened, untruth-unrealized state, and it’s the same for me as for anyone who comes to it. There are no masters or novices here. There are no teachings or beliefs; no Hindus or Buddhists or Jnanis or Advaitins; no masters or yogis or swamis; no discorporate entities or higher level energies or superior beings. Awake is awake. Everything else is everything else. With all this in mind, it should be easy to understand why there would be very little latitude in my thinking as to the definition of Spiritual Enlightenment. Within the

dreamstate there are countless shades of gray, but between the dreamstate and the awakened state there are no shades at all. The distinction is absolute: Truth exists. Untruth does not. This is enlightenment theory—the pure, binary mathematics of truth—and it’s very simple; as easy as one, two, three, but without the two and the three. It’s so simple and obvious that you’d have to close your eyes and bury your head not to see it. Specifically, you would need some mechanism by which to generate an energy field around yourself, an artificial micro-environment, a one-man spacecraft with an interactive in-flight movie so engrossing that you could forget that you were floating alone in empty space and believe that you were in a world full of people and drama and meaning. Which is exactly the case. The mechanism by which you accomplish this most remarkable of all feats is a well-oiled combination of emotion and intelligence. Emotion powers the energy field, Maya is the ruling intelligence, the in-flight movie is called Delusion. and this ship in which you aimlessly float through Nothing Forever is called Ego. And when that soap bubble pops? When ego is destroyed? When Maya is vanquished? What then? Everything. Who then? No one. It should now be easy to understand that a true and complete spiritual teaching can be conveyed in three words, while those that require entire libraries of books and legions of graybearded scholars to decrypt them can succeed only in producing ever more darkness and confusion. It should now be clear that there are no cases of instant enlightenment, that awakening is not the result of a single epiphany, but of a long, arduous journey wherein every step is a long, arduous journey. It should now be obvious that all dogma, beliefs, doctrines and philosophies are strictly dreamstate phenomenon with no independent existence in truth. It should now be easy to look at any teacher or teaching, at any book, at any spiritual or religious assertion, and to instantly know its exact and certain value. It should now be easy to look at every

internal thought, belief and emotion and know without the possibility of error what is real and what is imagined. It should now be clear that there is no room for debate or opinion with regard to what is true and what is false. The distinction is absolute: Truth exists. Untruth does not. * * *

Wisefool Press The Enlightenment Trilogy By Jed McKenna Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment Spiritual Warfare & Jed McKenna’s Notebook All Bonus Content from The Enlightenment Trilogy These books are made available in a variety of print, electronic and audio formats, and in other languages from other publishers. Please visit our website for more information: www.WisefoolPress.com # # #