A Tower of Bentinho Babble

March 18, 2017
[This is my just-posted at Amazon one-star review of Bentinho Massaro's text "Super Accelerated Living."]

In my 45 years of spiritual study and practice, I have read more than 3000 texts on Awakening -- and Bentinho Massaro’s “Super Accelerated Living” might be the worst of these. I have, in my Amazon reviews, categorized some of these texts as “bottom of the barrel,” but Bentinho deserves his own category, which I’ll now designate as “beneath the bottom of the barrel.” I have umpteen pages of notes from my read of this text, but because this is just a review, I’ll focus on just a few of the innumerable notes that make clear just how out of touch from reality Bentinho really is.

Bentinho says, “There is no external reality. There has never been a reality “out there.” There has never been another person you have interacted with. There has never been an actual physical world that you have been a part of. You are not a part of anything. You are the Creator of the entirety of the Universe, of All-That-Is… Are you ready to leave behind the thought that you are the receiver of reality and realize fully that you are a God —the creator of reality?...… Read the full article

Light on the Lankavatara Sutra

March 8, 2017
The Lankavatara Sutra (LS) is a profound and important Mahayana Buddhist sutra. It propounds the doctrine of Cittamatra, a sub-system of Yogacara which asserts that a single universal Mind (or Consciousness) has become everything. As such, the LS is akin to Hindu Kashmir Shaivism and Tibetan Dzogchen, which likewise assert that a single omnipresent Consciousness or Awareness (Siva or Dharmakaya), has manifested as all existents.

Unfortunately, if an impressive LS text has been penned since D.T. Suzuki’s “Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra” in 1930, I haven’t encountered it. And I would be much obliged if someone can point me to worthwhile LS work I might have missed.

Below, in order, are my four-star Amazon.com reviews of D.T. Suzuki’s translation/commentary of “The Lankavatara Sutra” (The Invasion of Buddhism by Samkhya) and “Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra” (One-of-a Kind Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra”), and my two-star reviews of Florin Giripescu Sutton’s “Existence and Enlightenment in the Lankavatara Sutra” (The Jungianization of Yogacara) and Red Pine’s “Lankavatara Sutra” (the Work of a Butcher with Large Thumbs).… Read the full article

The Exoteric Perennial Philosophy, Part 2

February 23, 2017

[Part 1 of this article (available at electricalspirituality.com) focused on Aldous Huxley and Frithjof Schuon’s explications of the Perennial Philosophy. Part 2 will focus on Rudolf Otto and Rene Guenon’s explications. Julius Evola is another Perennial Philosophy exponent worthy of consideration, but because I have already considered Evola’s writings (see my November 2016 Electrical Spirituality article Reviews of the writings of the Traditionalist Julius Evola), I will skip on them here.]

Why have I titled this article “The Exoteric Perennial Philosophy”? Because, in my opinion, none of these Perennial Philosophy exponents does the “Esoteric Perennial Philosophy” justice. In other words, to this point in time, not a single Perennial Philosophy expositor has tied together the common deeper, or esoteric, aspects of the Great Spiritual Traditions. Sans an Esoteric Perennial Philosophy, it is not possible to synthesize into an integral whole the various descriptions of the “higher” dimensions of the En-Light-enment project found in the Great Traditions.… Read the full article

The Exoteric Perennial Philosophy, Part 1

February 9, 2017

If you Google “the Perennial Philosophy,” you’ll find that two names dominate the search results: Aldous Huxley and Frithjof Schuon. This article, Part 1 of a two-part piece, will focus on their explications of the Perennial Philosophy. In Part 2, I will consider the explications of other exponents of the Perennial Philosophy, including Rudolph Otto, Rene Guenon, and Julius Evola.

Why have I titled this article “The Exoteric Perennial Philosophy”? Because, in my opinion, none of these Perennial Philosophy exponents has done the “Esoteric Perennial Philosophy” justice. In other words, to this point in time, not a single Perennial Philosophy expositor has tied together the common deeper, or esoteric, aspects of the Great Spiritual Traditions. Sans an Esoteric Perennial Philosophy, it is not possible to synthesize into an integral whole the various descriptions of the “higher” dimensions of the En-Light-enment project found in the Great Traditions.… Read the full article

Dissing Da’s “Deconstruction” of Kashmir Shaivism

February 4, 2017

Adi Da (a.k.a. Franklin Jones, Bubba Free John, Da Free John, Da Love-Ananda, et.al.), who passed in 2008, was, in my opinion, the greatest guru since Ramana Maharshi. I’m a huge proponent of Da’s spiritual teachings (as evidenced by the “stamp” of his teachings on mine)--but I have major disdain for some parts of his teachings, particularly those that disparage (and misrepresent) certain other spiritual traditions.

In this article, I’m going to focus on Da’s deconstruction of Kashmir Shaivism, because, from my perspective, his “deconstruction” of this great tradition is grossly error-ridden, and so I’m moved to rebut it.

In Da’s text “Santosha Adidam”, he describes the Four Ways, or Means, of Kashmir Shaivism thus:

“The ‘Individual Way’ (or the Way of ‘absorption in the Object’) is the first (or most “inferior”) step in the progressive path of Kashmir Shaivism, and it corresponds to the Devotional and Yogic disciplines associated with the fourth stage of life in both its ‘basic’ and ‘advanced’ phases).… Read the full article

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