Dumbed-Down, Disintegral, Discombobulated Dzogchen

[Note: This is my just-posted Amazon.com review of “The Natural Bliss of Being” by Jackson Peterson.]

Before I begin this review, I should preface it by stating that before reading this book, I was unceremoniously expelled from Jackson Peterson’s Dzogchen Trekchod Facebook group within a couple of days after joining and participating. Clearly Jackson was threatened by my superior understanding of Dzogchen and mysticism in general, and I was perceived as a threat to his Dharma. Jackson posted a final response to me at his Dzogchen Facebook page, but because I wasn’t allowed to respond there, I will do so here. In the latter part of this review I’ll present my response to his response.

The first thing that needs to be said about this book is that the Kindle edition, which I purchased, is grossly overpriced. Instead of $17, an appropriate price (for this 191-page book) would be about half that amount. I ordinarily would not pay $17 for a Kindle book, but in this case I had special motivation to read and review it.

One of the first things that Jackson makes clear in “The Natural Bliss of Being” is that he’s an eclectic mystic who buys into the Perennial Philosophy, particularly as it is expounded in Aldous Huxley’s “The Perennial Philosophy,” which he quotes. I found this laughable, because it’s totally the opposite POV that he espouses at his Dzogchen Trekchod Facebook page. When Jackson wrote that Hindu Sat-Chit-Ananda is not equivalent to Buddhist Nirvana or the Dharmakaya, he became peeved when I argued that it is. Moreover, in this book, Jackson writes that Nirvana is “pure Beingness,” which is exactly what Sat-Chit-Ananda is.

Early in “The Natural Bliss of Being,” Jackson tells us that Eckhart Tolles’s “The Power of Now” is an “excellent book,” which he strongly recommends. Upon reading this, I again had to laugh, because as the foremost expert on Eckhart Tolle’s teachings (see “Beyond the Power of Now”), I consider Tolle to be just a fogged-out pop guru who hit the big time only because Oprah approved and pushed him.

Because this is just a book review, I cannot properly and deeply respond to the multitudinous faults I find with this text. I took ten pages of notes as I read it, and the challenge for me is to decide which faults to focus on. Simply put, I’m unimpressed with Jackson’s understanding and elaboration of spiritual Dharma. But if anyone wants to discuss or debate anything in this book or my review of it, I’m more than game.

Jackson writes: “As discussed earlier, in meditation there is a specific state called samadhi or nondual awareness. In samadhi there is no longer a fixed identity located in specific time and space.”

Unbeknownst to Jackson, there are a number of different kinds (or states) of samadhi, and it bespeaks of gross reductionism to limit and conflate the term “samadhi” with nondual awareness.

Jackson maintains two Dzogchen group Facebook pages – Dzogchen Trekchod and Dzogchen Thogal, because what he specializes in teaching is Dzogchen. But amazingly, this book, putatively about Dzogchen, has zero, zilch, nada information about the two principal practices of Dzogchen – Trekchod (Trekcho) and Thogal (Togal). Moreover it has no information about the Trikaya (Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya) or the Base, Path, and Fruit. Anyone who knows anything about Dzogchen knows that any modern Dzogchen book that doesn’t address Trekcho, Togal, the Trikaya, and the Base, Path, and Fruit is a joke.

What this hodgepodge mysticism book does have is lots of recycled surface-level Advaita Vedanta and plenty of postmodern Buddhist bromides. In typical postmodern Buddhist style, Jackson doesn’t capitalize the term “Self-realization.”  For him, spiritual Awakening or Enlightenment is “self-realization.” This is farcical. It is the Self that is realized, not the self. Moreover, Jackson himself denies the existence of a self-entity, so how can there be “self-realization” for a non-self?

Jackson writes, “There is also the possibility that there is an authentic spiritual beingness within us. That state of spiritual being has profound meaning existentially. There simultaneously exists our imagined self, consumed wholly of thoughts reflective of our conditioning. The latter is called the ego in psychological and common usage. The former is what is revealed in enlightenment. The difference between the two is only a thought away.”

Again, this is superficial nonsense. The gap between a brief moment of no-mind and the realization of Being-ness, or the One Mind, or universal Self, is immense. Five sheaths (or coverings), detailed in real Advaita Vedanta teachings, separate the jiva (or embodied soul) from awakening to his true, or transcendental, Identity as the Self, or Buddha.

Jackson, in alignment with other (directly or indirectly/implicitly or explicitly) Derrida-influenced post-structuralists, reduces the Self to a self that is merely an activity of observation. He writes: “The true nature of our beingness is this undefined and objective observing that has no name, identity, or history.”

Our True Self, or Being-ness, is not “observing.” It is Sat-Chit-Ananda, or Siva-Shakti. The Self-Existing, Self-Aware, Self-Radiant Self, the Great Seer, cannot be reduced to mere seeing or observing.

I could go on and on deconstructing Jackson’s Dharma, but I will stop at this point and turn my attention to his final response to me, which I wasn’t allowed to respond to at his Dzogchen Facebook page. Here’s the first part of what he wrote (if I included the whole thing, this review would be way, way too long).

“LRon, it's a shame you don't read what I write. It's all fully explained and is nothing like you represent. It seems your opinions are full of your disregard for all others, except your own views. Your arrogant disdain for Nagarjuna says it all...

"Oy veh! A little knowledge about a lot of topics can make a messy soup of ideas! LRon, where to begin? The brain creates thoughts, intentions and actions. It also creates emotions and speech and movement. It creates the world you see and experience. There is no free will and no one to have free will. Those are just brain tricks…”

I’ll begin from the top. First, I have now read Jackson’s book, and the teachings in his book are as easy to deconstruct as the same ones at his Dzogchen Facebook page. Second, I have plenty of regard for certain other spiritual teachings, just not his. Third, I stand by my criticisms of Nagargarjuna’a illogic (made clear in my Amazon reviews), and I invite Jackson, or anyone else, to attempt to deconstruct what I’ve written.

My brain does not create the world I see and experience; it interprets it. Scientific instruments exclusive of my brain would verify that my body is a certain height and weight, and living. And my brain does not create the computer that sits in front of me; if someone excised my brain, my computer would still be sitting on my desk. If one’s brain, via “tricks,” creates one’s world and experiences, then why read Jackson? -- since that means everything he writes must necessarily be a product of his “trickster” brain, rather than a valid description of any objective reality. Jackson may not have free will (and may be a robotized Dzogchen dummy controlled by puppet strings, for all I know), but it is self-evident to me that I have free will. I, of my own volition, chose to write this review.

Jackson has read some modern neurology, brain science, and quantum theory – and so have I. And nothing he writes on these subjects impresses me. He refers to everyone’s favorite String Theory author –Brian Greene (a pathetic cosmologist, in my opinion) -- to support his idea of a “cosmic hologram.” Oh yes, the String Theory that Greene has championed for decades still has zero experimental evidence to support it. Moreover, plenty of other astro-physicists and cosmologists do not buy into his “holographic paradigm.” It’s all just speculative cosmic mumbo-jumbo at this point, but Jackson will impress the non-cognoscenti with his pseudo-profound “quantum ramblings” and attempt to marry pseudo-leading-edge science with his own brand of discombobulated, hodgepodge mysticism.

Jackson, a la his hero best-selling author Sam Harris (see my two-star review of “Waking Up”), makes it a point to diss astrology, even going so far as to label it “New Age magical thinking.” What a crock. Astrology is neither New Age nor magical. It is an ancient art-science based on sound astronomical principles that Jackson doesn’t have a clue about. Whereas I can debate pop-level quantum physics and cosmology with Jackson, he can’t debate astrology with me, because he knows nothing about it.

In summary, this book doesn’t cut the mustard as either a Dzogchen or general mysticism text. It consists of the ramblings of a maverick, postmodern, post-structuralist mystic who may dazzle the spiritual “sheeple,” with his cosmic, deconstructionist ruminations, but not the spiritual cognoscenti, who will reject his Dzogchen-ized pontifications as deficient and disintegral.