Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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129 of 148 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"A billy-clubbing by a Jed-I warrior" (the cover says so), February 15, 2003
Gaaaaaaaaaah. Not only the back cover but the _first ten pages_ of this book are filled with glowing reviews by the representatives of today's Illuminatus Industry, praising Jed McKenna to the skies, carrying on about how marvellously enlightened he is, and crowing about how this book is Just What The World Needs Today. Man, by the time you get done reading those, you'll be ready to toss (a) the book in the trash and (b) your cookies.Well, don't. In spite of all of the sell-it-to-the-seekers tub-thumping, it's actually a pretty good book. (And you have to wonder why so many of these folks have so heartily endorsed a book that heaps so much well-deserved scorn on the spiritual-fashion industry. Maybe they don't think he meant _them_.) On the plus side, there's the total absence of crap on the subject of enlightenment itself. This McKenna distinguishes carefully from both religiosity and mystical experience. Neither of these, he says, has squat to do with enlightenment, which is nothing more or less than abiding nondual awareness (a.k.a. "no-self"). His no-nonsense advice on how to get there comes down to this: just keep asking yourself what's true until you know. But it's not for everybody, getting to it is pretty painful, and the cottage industry that has grown up around it is actually selling something else. Well, that's nice, and his lack of bull-puckey on the subject is refreshing. Heck, enlightenment aside, he's fun to read just to enjoy a little healthy irreverence toward vegetarianism, the practice of mindfulness, and umpteen other brands of Fashion Spirituality. McKenna also seems to be a pretty decent and interesting guy in his meatspace persona. Much of the narrative really just conveys the flavor of his own life and character, so it's a good thing he turns out to be reasonably pleasant company -- astringent, curmudgeonly, genially cynical, and often funny as hell. On the minus side, there's the presence of a certain amount of crap on lots of _other_ subjects. For my taste, the hard-boiled lookie-what-an-illusion-busting-realist-I-am tone gets old after about the first ten or twenty pages. The Zen masters of legend are usually content to give somebody a single sharp blow with a stick; this guy goes at you with a meat axe, over and over and over and over. Readers of _Radical Honesty_ (whose author Brad Blanton provides one of the cover endorsements) may enjoy this sort of thing; I don't, and I don't find it either especially radical or especially honest. And -- much more seriously -- there's _way_ too much chatter about how unreal everybody else looks to somebody in that there state of abiding nondual awareness. McKenna is constantly pointing out that from his view-from-nowhere vantage point, everybody in the world is just a fictional character in a sort of cosmic soap opera. This would be annoying enough even if it were true just as it stands, and it isn't. Sure, there's something to it, and Ramana Maharshi got some good mileage out of the truth underlying this overstatement. But to hear McKenna tell it in his Holden-Caulfield-among-the-illuminati patter, somebody with nondual awareness would be mighty hard to tell from a straight-up sociopath. Don't let that stop you from reading it; just watch for the stuff that sounds out of balance. Besides, that dramatic-rhetorical stuff (which is all it is) may be just what readers of some temperaments need. Just bear in mind that real nondualism doesn't dismiss actual people as unreal or fictional; this is as much an untruth as the contrary statement that we're simply "real" just as we seem to ourselves. In Hindu terms, folks, maya is Brahma too. By the way, I'm not altogether sure whether the narrative portions of the book are strictly nonfiction or even whether "Jed McKenna" is a real person (in the usual sense of the words); it's entirely possible that the whole thing is as fictional as its author says all the rest of us are anyway. It doesn't much matter, though.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant!, November 22, 2008
It reads much like a novel which makes it a gripping read. Jed McKenna has boldly gone where few spiritual teachers have dared to go before. He clears out the erroneous beliefs surrounding enlightenment and clarifies what it really is. He is funny at times and portrays himself as an average man who happened to become enlightened. He's honest about the subject and there is no airs and graces. This book combined with another witty and powerful book by Keith Loy Finding Reality 'Awakening to Spiritual Freedom' will provide all of the clarity you will ever need on this subject.
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32 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Good Morning. This Is ~My~ Wake Up Call.", March 2, 2003
~
Before this review goes any further, please accept this advice: Get this book! As soon as possible and by any means, read Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing. When you've finished reading through the epilogue, you'll either think that it was an interesting and entertaining book, or, if you "get it", it will radically change what you ~think~ is your life! You may be unaffected, you may be altered, but odds are strong that you won't be disappointed.Writing this review is risky. As the book suggests, what is written as "truth" today will seem silly tomorrow. Notwithstanding that, this review approaches SE:TDT from two very different points of view. From the usual, everyday perspective, the book is a wonderful experience, worthy of the time spent for anyone who enjoys reading books plucked from the "New Age" section regarding enlightenment, spirituality and various paths available to "seekers." As most reviewers have written, the author's masterful style, candor and wit make the book an enjoyable and provocative read. You'll take offense with the author's blunt condemnation of any practice other than self-autolysis (self-enquiry) only to the degree that you believe in what you've been doing so far. Some readers may find this approach unnerving and caustic, others may find it simply direct and pointed.
The nits that some readers pick regarding the promotional blurbs, the cover image or title, or their disagreement with some of the beliefs and concepts in the text seem to be nothing more than red herrings, evidence of ego-in-action, and a wild miss from the point (or pointing) of the book. Rather, with approximately 30% of the U.S. population ready to make the shift to second-tier consciousness, it seems that Wisefool Press knows exactly how to target-market the book. This book was written for a specific audience, and they did everything they needed to do to get this book into your hands. (And guess what, folks; It's NOT about making money.) Look again. Read between the lines as well as beyond the concepts. See the recursive (but not paradoxical) nature of this book. If you have a thorn in your foot, you could use another thorn to remove it, then throw both thorns away. Use whatever "concepts" or "beliefs" are in this book as a tool to remove all your current beliefs, and then throw away both the beliefs and the book. Neither will be necessary anymore. For "No. Belief. Is. True." Including this one. So, from another perspective: This book does not exist. Without doubt, as several reviewers have speculated, a "Jed McKenna" does not exist. "You" do not exist and "I" do not exist. This review does not exist. Everything you think you are is illusory, and every belief you have is false...without exception. "Nothing that says two, not one, survives." With that understanding and the insight that "there's only one of us here", who wrote this book? (Pronouns fail miserably, here.) Read the following out loud, using "I" as a pointer to the indescribable, impersonal, boundless "I" that is Truth, and not the "i" you sense as a separate, ego-bound body-mind organism:
"~I~ wrote this book, in order that ~I~ might wake myself up and find my way back home. In the depths of my 15 billion years of sleep, I'm whispering to myself, "Wake up, and see who ~I~ really am."" What an outstanding piece of work!
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