Sorting the Chaff from the Wheat

If there's anything Jed McKenna helps his readers do in The Enlightenment Trilogy, it is exactly that: Sorting the chaff from the wheat. In a world with shelves full of phony spirituality, which is often more useful as a drug to alleviate the pain of this life, or obfuscate it with rose-colored glasses, these books stand out as a hard-hitting alternative. There were always some "bonus materials" which were included in the e-book versions, but which have now been published in print as well, and this little volume is absolutely worth its weight in gold. To give a bit of the flavor, I'll quote some typical statements towards the end of the book:

... 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. (p. 179)

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've 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. (p. 181)

Although my primary epiphany could be summed up as Truth Exists, it was actually much more complicated than that. The flip side of Truth Exists is This Ain't It. (p. 189)

These quotes are indicative for the quality of the book. It is truly hard-hitting from beginning to end. No sacred cows are spared, and he is consistently funny in the way he points up the fallacies, with which our ego, or "Maya" keep us wrapped around the axle, so we can't see for the life of us what's going on. Meanwhile he delivers among others a very clear expose of why it pays to get in the observer seat, and watch ourselves play the role which we think is our life, for it is the way to bring the ego's machinations to the light, and exposure is the only thing which will de-fang the ego in the long run. It cannot stand the light.

Besides other things, this book, and the entire series always seems helpful again in having a healthy respect for the ego, which can help us towards clarity as to why we do not want to hear the things that either Jesus, or the likes of Jed McKenna had to say, and why also Buddhism has nothing to do with who and what the Buddha was, and what he had to teach, just like Christianity has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus. Simply put, we prefer to keep on dreaming. In the The Book of Thomas this theme is picked up among others in Logion 13, where Thomas after having spoken privately with Jesus, is asked by the other apostles what Jesus said, and he responds that they'd stone him if he told them. Accepting the atonement for ourselves, as the Course calls it, or reaching Human Adulthood, as McKenna calls it, is possible only if we are under no illusion as to why we resist it so much, and get very honest with ourselves and with that Internal Teacher, that quiet voice that will lead us to the truth if we let ourselves be led.

To conclude, I'll cite two priceless paragraphs on Buddhism, from page 47 of the book, noting that these comments apply to a lot more than just Buddhism:

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 the 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 consumer-friendly, albeit true, truth. (p. 47) 

I would hardly know what to add to that, so I won't try, except to say, run, don't walk to your nearest bookstore to get this little gem. Jed McKenna's Notebook: All Bonus Content from The Enlightenment Trilogy By Jed McKenna

The Time Has Come

The time has come for me to address the issue of reincarnation and past life memories here, and I'm guessing it won't be the only time. I had been thinking about this all week long, and then today AlterEgo909 posted some musings on déja vu experiences, surmising that they could be past life memories. So I took that as a sign that it was time to stop thinking about it and start writing.

Personally I do not "believe in reincarnation" in an explicit sense, but I do believe that it is a practical way to understand certain phenomena in our experience. The whole thing really becomes much more manageable in the context of a holographic conception of the universe, which is where quantum physics is leading us. There was an interesting article in the Scientific American in July of 2003, titled "Information in the Holographic Universe" and there are any number of other sources where these ideas have been put forth in understandable terms, which give us a framework for understanding that it is our linear experience of time which is really illusory, and just a function of our ability to perceive, but that just like in a movie, the beginning and the ending already exist, but right now I'm watching the scene that's on the screen for a split second, and that to me is "now" and I'm not even thinking about the fact that the beginning and the ending of the tape (film), are already in existence, and are really available simultaneously. Our experience of ourselves is similar. We see ourselves as specific to a time and a place. But some of our experiences can suggest otherwise.

Clearly Gary Renard's experiences -- and my book is after all based on his work -- are no doubt exceptional. Few people have ever had such clear experiences as he did with the visits of Arten and Pursah, who were the apostles Thaddeus and Thomas respectively, with the additional wrinkle that Pursah (a woman) represents Gary's identity in his next lifetime. As I've written repeatedly, in my book and on this blog and elsewhere, it is purely a personal decision for me to accept as authoritative Pursah's selection of an edited "kernel" of the Thomas gospel. I do so only because Gary's experience seems credible and cogent to me, and I find Pursah's edits of the text, which are mostly minor, highly credible, resulting as they do in a collection of 70 sayings which seems highly coherent to me, avoiding some internal contradictions that seem to be present in the historical text. Thus if you are from the school that linear time is reality, which is really a Newtonian conception of the universe, then none of this makes any sense. However, if you suspect that there may be something to the holographic model, then the experience of "memories" of other lifetimes, either past or future seems possible, and can be explained. The temptation always is to make such experiences special, because many people don't seem to have them or at least not be aware of them, but clearly in cultures where reincarnation is part of the common cultural tradition, there is nothing special about this. The problem, if any, comes again if those perceptions are taken as "reality," rather than as simply a way of looking at the world, given my experience of it.

As a young man, in my twenties, I was once askes by a gentleman who I regarded as my spiritual teacher for some twenty-five years, what I thought about reincarnation, and much to my own surprise, I answered that I found it plausible but not necessary, and he responded that he thought I was right. At this time I had already had extensive exposure to cultures where the belief in reincarnation was completely normal and natural, such as Tibetan Buddhism, among others because in the early sixties through friends of my father's, a student from the company of the Dalai Lama came to Holland to study from their exile in Switserland. I still remember the consternation at the dinner table, when he asked us how long it was on horseback from Rotterdam, Holland to Basel, Switserland - horseback riding being still the dominant mode of travel for him. Many years later I found A Course in Miracles, and its position on reincarnation mirrors my own, and overall its model of our experiential universe really matches up nicely with the holograhpic notions suggested by quantum mechanics, including the basic metaphysics of forgiveness, which entails that it is really always in truth ourselves we are forgiving, since the mind is one, and our belief in our personal identity, which we mistake for reality, is what prevents us from seeing that, so that by letting go of that belief we open ourselves up to a more universal experience. Here is what the Course says:

In the ultimate sense, reincarnation is impossible. There is no past or future, and the idea of birth into a body has no meaning either once or many times. Reincarnation cannot, then, be true in any real sense. Our only question should be, "Is the concept helpful?" And that depends, of course, on what it is used for. If it is used to strengthen the recognition of the eternal nature of life, it is helpful indeed. Is any other question about it really useful in lighting up the way? Like many other beliefs, it can be bitterly misused. At least, such misuse offers preoccupation and perhaps pride in the past. At worst, it induces inertia in the present. In between, many kinds of folly are possible.

Reincarnation would not, under any circumstances, be the problem to be dealt with now. If it were responsible for some of the difficulties the individual faces now, his task would still be only to escape from them now. If he is laying the groundwork for a future life, he can still work out his salvation only now. To some, there may be comfort in the concept, and if it heartens them its value is self-evident. It is certain, however, that the way to salvation can be found by those who believe in reincarnation and by those who do not. The idea cannot, therefore, be regarded as essential to the curriculum. There is always some risk in seeing the present in terms of the past. There is always some good in any thought which strengthens the idea that life and the body are not the same.
For our purposes, it would not be helpful to take any definite stand on reincarnation. A teacher of God should be as helpful to those who believe in it as to those who do not. If a definite stand were required of him, it would merely limit his usefulness, as well as his own decision making. Our course is not concerned with any concept that is not acceptable to anyone, regardless of his formal beliefs. (ACIM-M-24.1-3:4)

The Thomas Logia sound like Zen Koans sometimes

That sort of a comment has been quite common in the discussions around the Thomas gospel. By now we know enough to understand what happened to the Jesus tradition after his death: substantial embellishment. So no wonder that these early materials should have a different character.

Jesus may or may not have been to India in those first 33 years about which we know so little. We may not be able to know this for sure. However philosophically, since truth is one, and oneness is a non-dualistic concept, therefore it should not surprise if Jesus sounded like Buddha or like Advaita Vedanta at times. The explanation is not necessarily that he was exposed to those sources, although he may have been. People did travel. The summary of these different forms of belief system, from dualism to pure non-dualism is very well explained in Gary's 2nd book, Your Immortal Reality.

The philosophical point is perhaps more compelling. If truth is true, and all else is a lie, well, there are only so many ways you could express truth in words, particularly since words are by nature dualistic, and so you can only approach it, never state it explicitly. So at some level the most abstract expressions of wisdom teaching would have to sound recognizably similar. So to be "like the Buddha," Jesus does not have to be a Buddhist, or even have known about the Buddha. From that standpoint I am totally at ease around Gary Renard's frequent observation that A Course in Miracles is sometimes closer to Buddhism than to Christianity, although of course there are very dualistic traditions in Buddhism, but it does seem that in Buddhism more of the original non-dualistic teachings survived and even thrived at times.