Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing
Blue Pill Balderdash
[My 2-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnest Thing: The Enlightenment Trilogy Book 1” by Jed McKenna.]
I’m a spiritual teacher-writer, and when I had a second enquiry from a student of mine about Jed McKenna, who I had never read because I figured he was just a poor man’s Hunter S. Thompson using neo-Advaita Vedanta (a philosophy I “loathe”) to peddle insipid fictionalized spirituality, I decided it was time to read and review one of his texts—so I downloaded “Spiritual Enlightenment:The Damnedest Thing,” and zipped through Jed’s pseudo-profound ramblings in less than two hours.
Jed’s book is supposed to be about spiritual Enlightenment, but Jed doesn’t have a clue what spiritual En-Light-enment is about—uniting one’s consciousness (or soul) with Light-energy, or Divine Power, called Shakti in Hinduism, the Sambhogakaya in Buddhism, and the Holy Spirit in Christianity. Jed’s de-Spirit-ualized idea of Enlightenment has nothing to do with Spirit, or Clear-Light Energy. Jed defines Enlightenment as “Truth Realization,” but doesn’t explain what Truth (or Sat) is: Siva-Shakti (or Cit-Ananda), which is Consciousness-Bliss-Energy. Jed can’t explain this because he is Un-initiated by the Shakti, the Spirit, Light-energy, and all he can do is to reduce Truth to the level of banal “talking-school” neo-Advaita Vedanta, which tells you you are the Self, but provides no details about the practice and process of Self-realization, or literal organismic En-Light-enment.
Jed, in alignnment with many Advaita Vedantans, attempts demean mystical union by reducing it to a dualistic experience superfluous to “truth-realization,” “the truth of Being.” But unbeknownst to Jed, without the union of one’s consciousness with Light-energy, the Objective half of Ultimate Reality, there can be no Spirit-ual En-Light-enment. Moreover, Jed doesn’t define Being, but I will: Being (or Sat) is Consciousness-Bliss/Light-Energy (or Cit-Ananda, or Siva-Shakti). In other words to Be is to Be En-Light-ened, and to Be En-Light-ened it to Be consciously united with Clear-Light Energy, Spirit.
In accordance with “talking-school” neo-Advata Vedanta, Jed informs us, “In terms of enlightenment, it doesn’t matter if she [one] meditates or not. In diametrical opposition to Jed, I say that without the practice of long-time serious meditation, EnLightenment is not possible.
Jed says he “doesn’t radiate anything.” Anyone who is truly En-Light-ened, such as Ramana Maharshi, radiates palpable Heart (or Hridaya)-Shakti, radiant Blessing Power. Again, Jed is not En-Light-ened.
Jed mentions Ramana Maharshi and his “Who Am I?” Self-enquiry, but like his fellow neo-Advaita Vedantans, Jed does not grok the enquiry. Jed writes, “Ramana Maharshi’s ‘Who Am ‘query is done in your head.” Here, extracted from my one-star review of James Swartz’s “How to Attain Enlightenment,” is how the “query” works” and leads to Self-realization:
“One’s one's thought are traced from the subtle to the causal, not from the gross to the subtle. The root of the causal body (where the Bliss Sheath intersects one's soul, the root of one's psyche) is the Hridayam, the Heart (distinct from the Anahata Chakra). And in accordance with Ramana Maharshi, I say the Self cannot be realized via Self-enquiry unless one's spurious, ego-based `I' thoughts are traced to their Source in the Hridayam, the spiritual Heart-center, where they are obviated, or outshone, by the true, transcendental `I,' the radiant Self, whose locus, relative to one's body, is two digits to the right of the center of one's chest. One's thoughts, the products of one's samskaras (karmic seed tendencies), originate in the spiritual Heart and travel to the brain, where they crystallize as one's mind. A Jnani must practice Self-enquiry and thereby pull the mind into the spiritual Heart, where the false, or ego `I' is spontaneously dissolved, and supplanted by the true, or transcendental `I,' the Self.”
Jed, infected by the Madhyamika virus, reduces his Reality to empty space. He writes “Empty space is my reality, the void.” As Ramana Maharshi, David R. Hawkins, and Kashmir Shaivism assert, empty space is not Ultimate Reality; Sat-Chit-Ananda is. The Seer of both the void and the non-void is the Real—and this Seer is Consciousness-Power.
Jed is well-read, a literary type, and he digs Plato, continually referencing him. But just as Jed doesn’t grok Ramana Maharshi, he likewise doesn’t get Plato.Plato describes the One as an “All-Swallowing Entity,” but anti-mystical Jed reduces this All-Swallowing Entity, this single, radiant, All-Subsuming Intensity to “empty space.”
At another point, Jed decribes Realized state of no-self as “abiding nondual awareness.” Unbeknownst to Jed, the only way a Jnani or disciple can remain in unbroken, or abiding “sahaj” Samadhi is by uniting his awareness with the Light-enery Continuum, the eternal, or timeless, Spirit-current, or Divine Force-flow. But Jed, ever the exotericist, can’t move beyond surface-level spirituality.
Jed claims to offer the Way to “escape the clutches of Maya,” but from my perspective, the daffy dude, a hodgepodge of Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, neo-Advaita Vedanta, and pop Zen, is peddling the blue pill, not the red, to the masses enmeshed in the Matrix.
[My 2-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnest Thing: The Enlightenment Trilogy Book 1” by Jed McKenna.]
I’m a spiritual teacher-writer, and when I had a second enquiry from a student of mine about Jed McKenna, who I had never read because I figured he was just a poor man’s Hunter S. Thompson using neo-Advaita Vedanta (a philosophy I “loathe”) to peddle insipid fictionalized spirituality, I decided it was time to read and review one of his texts—so I downloaded “Spiritual Enlightenment:The Damnedest Thing,” and zipped through Jed’s pseudo-profound ramblings in less than two hours.
Jed’s book is supposed to be about spiritual Enlightenment, but Jed doesn’t have a clue what spiritual En-Light-enment is about—uniting one’s consciousness (or soul) with Light-energy, or Divine Power, called Shakti in Hinduism, the Sambhogakaya in Buddhism, and the Holy Spirit in Christianity. Jed’s de-Spirit-ualized idea of Enlightenment has nothing to do with Spirit, or Clear-Light Energy. Jed defines Enlightenment as “Truth Realization,” but doesn’t explain what Truth (or Sat) is: Siva-Shakti (or Cit-Ananda), which is Consciousness-Bliss-Energy. Jed can’t explain this because he is Un-initiated by the Shakti, the Spirit, Light-energy, and all he can do is to reduce Truth to the level of banal “talking-school” neo-Advaita Vedanta, which tells you you are the Self, but provides no details about the practice and process of Self-realization, or literal organismic En-Light-enment.
Jed, in alignnment with many Advaita Vedantans, attempts demean mystical union by reducing it to a dualistic experience superfluous to “truth-realization,” “the truth of Being.” But unbeknownst to Jed, without the union of one’s consciousness with Light-energy, the Objective half of Ultimate Reality, there can be no Spirit-ual En-Light-enment. Moreover, Jed doesn’t define Being, but I will: Being (or Sat) is Consciousness-Bliss/Light-Energy (or Cit-Ananda, or Siva-Shakti). In other words to Be is to Be En-Light-ened, and to Be En-Light-ened it to Be consciously united with Clear-Light Energy, Spirit.
In accordance with “talking-school” neo-Advata Vedanta, Jed informs us, “In terms of enlightenment, it doesn’t matter if she [one] meditates or not. In diametrical opposition to Jed, I say that without the practice of long-time serious meditation, EnLightenment is not possible.
Jed says he “doesn’t radiate anything.” Anyone who is truly En-Light-ened, such as Ramana Maharshi, radiates palpable Heart (or Hridaya)-Shakti, radiant Blessing Power. Again, Jed is not En-Light-ened.
Jed mentions Ramana Maharshi and his “Who Am I?” Self-enquiry, but like his fellow neo-Advaita Vedantans, Jed does not grok the enquiry. Jed writes, “Ramana Maharshi’s ‘Who Am ‘query is done in your head.” Here, extracted from my one-star review of James Swartz’s “How to Attain Enlightenment,” is how the “query” works” and leads to Self-realization:
“One’s one's thought are traced from the subtle to the causal, not from the gross to the subtle. The root of the causal body (where the Bliss Sheath intersects one's soul, the root of one's psyche) is the Hridayam, the Heart (distinct from the Anahata Chakra). And in accordance with Ramana Maharshi, I say the Self cannot be realized via Self-enquiry unless one's spurious, ego-based `I' thoughts are traced to their Source in the Hridayam, the spiritual Heart-center, where they are obviated, or outshone, by the true, transcendental `I,' the radiant Self, whose locus, relative to one's body, is two digits to the right of the center of one's chest. One's thoughts, the products of one's samskaras (karmic seed tendencies), originate in the spiritual Heart and travel to the brain, where they crystallize as one's mind. A Jnani must practice Self-enquiry and thereby pull the mind into the spiritual Heart, where the false, or ego `I' is spontaneously dissolved, and supplanted by the true, or transcendental `I,' the Self.”
Jed, infected by the Madhyamika virus, reduces his Reality to empty space. He writes “Empty space is my reality, the void.” As Ramana Maharshi, David R. Hawkins, and Kashmir Shaivism assert, empty space is not Ultimate Reality; Sat-Chit-Ananda is. The Seer of both the void and the non-void is the Real—and this Seer is Consciousness-Power.
Jed is well-read, a literary type, and he digs Plato, continually referencing him. But just as Jed doesn’t grok Ramana Maharshi, he likewise doesn’t get Plato.Plato describes the One as an “All-Swallowing Entity,” but anti-mystical Jed reduces this All-Swallowing Entity, this single, radiant, All-Subsuming Intensity to “empty space.”
At another point, Jed decribes Realized state of no-self as “abiding nondual awareness.” Unbeknownst to Jed, the only way a Jnani or disciple can remain in unbroken, or abiding “sahaj” Samadhi is by uniting his awareness with the Light-enery Continuum, the eternal, or timeless, Spirit-current, or Divine Force-flow. But Jed, ever the exotericist, can’t move beyond surface-level spirituality.
Jed claims to offer the Way to “escape the clutches of Maya,” but from my perspective, the daffy dude, a hodgepodge of Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, neo-Advaita Vedanta, and pop Zen, is peddling the blue pill, not the red, to the masses enmeshed in the Matrix.
