Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment, The (Mass Market Paperback)

by Thaddeus Golas (Author) "We are equal beings and the universe is our relations with each other..." (more)
Key Phrases: One Mind, Pluto the Dog

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Thaddeus Golas is a lazy man. Laziness keeps him from believing that enlightenment demands effort, discipline, strict diet, non-smoking and other evidences of virtue. He found a way to enlighten himself - and you - with two sentences. The first is We are equal beings and the universe is our relations with each other. The second? The universe is made of one kind of entity; each one is alive, each determines the course of his own existence." If you remember this, that's all you really need to know to understand this book. Originally published in 1972, and in print for 15 years, THE LAZY MAN'S GUIDE TO ENLIGHTNMENT teaches you, amongst other things, how to feel good. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap
"We are equal beings and the universe is our relations with each other. The universe is made of one kind of entity: each one is alive, each determines the course of his own existence.

"That is really all you need to know to understand this book or to write your own. Everything that I say has it's roots in that first paragraph, and it's possible to resolve any question by going back to it and thinking it through for yourself."

These words of Thaddeus Golas's, written back in 1971, still ring true, will always ring true. Now, The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment come to us in an attractive hardcover edition, including an author's introduction and author photographs. In the introduction, Golas reveals the events in his life leading up to the writing of the book and the response to the Guide during its many years in print. It is a book for equal beings from all backgrounds.

"The concept that we live in a universe of equal beings can make sense of all religions, and can contain all metaphysical attitudes. It is ithe easiest raft to discard when we reach the other shore that is no shore. It can tell us how to live on this plane; it can show how our physical existence is the expression of spiritual laws. It gives us an absolutely confident understanding of what is true and what is real.

"Equal and unique live beings are all that is fully true and real in the universe. We are the universe." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (July 1, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553263587
• ISBN-13: 978-0553263589
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #622,326 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The lazy person's Dhammapada, December 31, 2002

By	John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Silver Lake, OH) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment (Hardcover)

I've never been interested in having a guru, and Thaddeus Golas was never interested in being one. He wasn't looking for converts, followers, or even agreement, and I've always felt free to disagree with the way he makes this or that point. So this book has long been perfectly suited to me and my somewhat iconoclastic/refractory temperament.

This little book is one of a very small handful that I regard as the absolute cream of "hippie spirituality". Stephen Gaskin's _This Season's People_ is that literature's Diamond Sutra and Paul Williams's _Das Energi_ is its Tao Te Ching. Golas's slim volume comes very close to Gaskin's in its adamantine wisdom and so ranks as a close second in diamond-sutrahood, but I think of it as something like the Dhammapada.

Its message is so easy to put across that, technically, you already know everything it says. The heart of the matter is: relax; just love as much as you can from wherever you are. When you come right down to it, you're already "enlightened" and you don't have anything to prove.

But somehow, the _way_ Golas puts this message (and the bit about "love as much as you can" is a direct quotation) has some major mojo in it, enough to knock your mind loose from your brain.

Golas knew it, too. He died in 1997, but a couple of years before that, he wrote a nice long introduction to this book so that it could be republished in hardcover. It was, and this is that edition. There are also some photos of Golas, ranging from childhood to middle age. (That's good for potential buyers to know, because the full text of the original book is available online and there wouldn't be much point in getting this one if it didn't contain anything new.)

In the introduction, Golas provides some interesting autobiography and also expresses more than a little wonderment at the effect this little book has had. He even notes that there are some things in it that he's even come to believe are incorrect, and yet he won't change a word of it because it seems to have the power to _do_ something to its readers, something compared to which his "corrected" views seem flat and tame. This is quite true. So beware; in its way this text is every bit as potent as all of Anthony de Mello's books.

A longtime "underground" spiritual classic, this little book belongs on your shelf next to Douglas Harding's _On Having No Head_ (which takes a very different but every bit as "simple" approach to the non-problem of enlightenment).

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An easy book to wear out., May 27, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment (Hardcover)

I am a lazy man too. I also like to laugh. I bought the book at a used book store before Amazon was even around. I thought it was a parody of the other arrogant "self help" books in fashion at the time.

This is the real thing. The truth in this book cuts through the jungle of spiritualism like a bolt of lightening. That was 10 years ago. I keep it by the bed on the nightstand--the ultimate anonymous, unpretentious keyhole to the way it is.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars its as if he were speaking to me personally from across time, December 4, 2003

By	J. Stamps "justjohn2" (saratoga, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment (Hardcover)

Over twenty years ago a woman i worked with handed me this book and said here i think this will speak to you. strangely, wonderfully, Barbara became a best friend. she is someone i feel like i've known forever. and this gift of a book she gave me has served me unlike any other book ever, because it excludes no one, anywhere, ever. it is all inclusive in love. about 15 years ago i was feeling really awful and sat in my bathtub and read this book aloud into a tape recorder so that i could listen to it in my car (which i seemed to always be in). later i found it on tape read by the author which i still have and cherish listening to. i reread this book yearly it seems, because it makes me smile, and i pass it on to those i feel will get some relief from it. i've given so many copies away over the years. i searched bookstores used and new for copies. i finally had only one left. i'm so happy to have found this book in print again and am ordering many copies to give to people i love. thank you thaddeus. you speak to me of love and expansion and inclusion forever. you remind me to expand and love when i'm contracted and dense. i love you.