PKD can be really destablizing I think. When I read his books I feel like I'm engaging in this super intense direct-download. Like I'm downloading this information straight from God, and it's just going into my head and rearranging tons of stuff really quickly. It completely disregards the existing organization of ideas in my mind. What especially impresses me is how he was able to write about divinity, God, Satan, etc in completely informal language.. and yet when I read it I feel like I'm plugged into this monolithic meta-consciousness. The way he handles the divine paradoxes.. it all leaves me breathless. Whenever I go through a PKD-immersion phase I find I start feeling kind of floaty and weird. Actually, I feel like Mr. Burns in that episode of the Simpsons where he goes floating around at night and he's glowing and his pupils are dilated.
That having been said.. I'm still digesting the Divine Invasion.
In other news, I've been thinking about the weird passivity that all these new age philosophies promote so aggressively, specifically in the context of the whole "detachment" idea. I think there's a lot to be said for "detachment" in the truly zen sense of the word but I'm afraid there's something else running rampant out there, and that's a kind of "pop detachment" that claims to be a tool for internal empowerment but which I'm beginning to suspect is actually robbing people of individual authority. When I say "authority" I don't mean like bossing other people around, I'm talking about the freedom and the strength to AUTHOR your own self, to claim your path. Let's take the popular new age series 'Conversations With God' by Neale Donald Walsch. Now, I read this when I was sixteen and I thought it was pretty fucking swell back then, but I've since changed my mind. This book, and many others, go on and on about how you just have to let everything go and stop wanting and that desire is the root of all suffering and etc. In a sense this is true, but I think it's a gross and potentially dangerous oversimplification.
A few minutes ago I was sitting here flipping through an old journal from 2003. This notebook contains pages and pages of me talking about the stuff with which I was dissatisfied. At that point I hadn't fully gotten out from under the new agey inundation and reading these old journal entries I just see all these buzzwords all over the place, words like "ALLOW" and "CHOOSE" and "CREATE" and etc. Now, there's nothing wrong with any of those words, inherently. They're cool words with cool meanings. What I see, though, is a girl who was really caught up in this new age jargon to the point where she was verbally walking on eggshells even in the privacy of her OWN DIARY. I read so many of these pseudo-spiritual self help books, I started to believe that words like "want" and "need" are highly toxic and should be avoided at all costs, EVEN AT THE COST OF HONEST EXPRESSION. I don't want this new age "fake it til you make it" bullshit -- if I'm not evolved enough to not WANT anything, I shouldn't go around PRETENDING that I am. It's painful and inauthentic. You can't just ignore your wants and your dissatisfaction with life and hope it all goes away eventually, because guess what -- it fucking won't! The only way to stop wanting and needing is to ACKNOWLEDGE the want, examine yourself and your circumstances, maybe come up with a plan of action. Start making changes! I think that's way more effective than trying to trick your brain into enlightenment by eliminating certain words from your vocabulary.
Anyway, I'm not discounting the power of thought or language. I think that this whole fad is actually rooted in something very sound, but it's been perverted and glossed over and made marketable and formulaic and easy.
I personally am a lot happier since I stopped trying to adhere to those stupid rules.
divine invasion was the first book of his i read and for that its been one of my favorites. two things i found incredible in that: the bible as a hologram. and the other is the whole thing about the "beside helper" and how they could take your place and feed in a blank record into the cosmic justice machine. but that in order to use the beside-helper, you have to admit you've done wrong. and that whole thing about how strict karma as too harsh, and the beside-helper was a way to "feed mercy into the circuit". it's the single-most elegant and coherent explanation i've ever found of the idea of redemption or the need for surrender to christ.
anyway, amen on all that new age stuff. i think what youre saying about eliminating the vocabulary is supposed to remove the emotion. instead it just makes you really unsure of what the problem is and it wells up in other places where it can be expressed.
ive also always had a problem with people just being so dispassionate in talking about spirituality, which i think a lot of new age material encourages. that plus the whole thing about how its "impolite" to discuss religion at the dinner table, etc. it's stupid. i think that's why its so great to be able to write really erudite stuff about religion and then drop in a "mother-fucker" or "BULLSHIT" to liven things up and bring everybody back to reality in the discussion.
Posted by: occult investigator | July 15, 2005 at 09:10 PM
YES, the beside-helper thing. YES !! i actually have that part bookmarked -- i was going to quote the whole passage here in a separate post. maybe i'll do that tomorrow morning. when i read that part i was just completely floored and really touched.
ahh.
yeah that's exactly what i'm talking about, eliminating the vocabulary is confusing and i think it generates anxiety because it causes people (or me at least) to internalize all this toxic stuff.. like for example they say that you shouldn't say "i'm lonely" because when you say that you're reinforcing your own loneliness by DECLARING it to the universe, which is (supposedly) this reactive and all-accomodating entity.
well i STILL say it's better to say "i'm lonely!" than to LIE about it and say you're not when you actually are.. i mean if you apply the same energetic principle wouldn't the universe "know" that you're lying and wouldn't it like reinforce that deception and mirror it back to you?
you can't trick the universe.
Posted by: laura jane | July 15, 2005 at 09:34 PM
i think when Buddhists talk about non-attachement they don't mean not doing the things you want to do. the thing is to be aware of what you are doing and being careful that you are not doing things because of ego. ego wants all sorts of things -- it's a big black hole that can't be filled. being aware of what your real intentions are is the key to avoiding suffering. when "I" want this or "I" want that, then the potential for suffering increases.
there are Buddhists who write books, teach classes, climb mountains, jet ski - i'm sure they wanted to do those things on some level, they just do them with right thinking and action. after all, Buddhism is the middle road - the path of the Everyman, so-to-speak - and that means living life and being in the now.
Posted by: iggir | July 19, 2005 at 02:29 PM
Good comments. Yeah, I'm suspicious of the always bright and sunny part of new age. I wrote recently about being removed from your ego. It works especially in really tense situations, although I can't tell you how to induce it. By the way, I've started a new blog site (Gnostic in nature) called McCravey...http://enewsblog.com/McCravey/
Posted by: McCravey | July 20, 2005 at 10:42 AM
A woman after my own heart!
You'll notice from my ramblings on homoplasmate that I too consider PKD to be nothing short of a prophet, even despite the fact that he was obviously a little bit crazy (something wise to hold in the back of one's mind when reading his work). In this sentiment you'll find that you and I are a growing number of modern gnostics who feel the same way, and one goal of my professional career as a PhD of gnosticism is to bring his insight and wisdom to as many people's attention as possible.
ARMOS PISCES NON PORTANT!
Posted by: sparkwidget | July 23, 2005 at 07:43 PM