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Originally Posted by Inhuman

After going through the smut (though highly entertaining smut) on SYG, I think it would be interesting to discuss spirituality / evolving consciousness / God / Enlightenment.

For the past 6 months I've been reading a lot by Alan Watts, Tolle, sacred texts like the Gita and Pali Canon excerpts, Hesse, Terrence Mckenna and Robert Anton Wilson, and sometimes attend a Vedanta meditation center for Satsang. I just suddenly understood how both spirituality and religion is pragmatic and though often attacked, not something that's "bad" in nature like I used to think.

Where do you stand when it comes to spirituality / religion / evolving consciousness?

I also read a lot of Alan Watts in my 20s. Later found he was a major rascal when it came to his personal dealings, so that was a big letdown (he also had problems with alcohol). Still, his popularizations of Taoism were highly interesting, though he got Zen more or less wrong (he's been rebutted by various real-deal Zen masters). Still, I like the Tao Te Ching best and Chuang-Tzu, who is brilliant and hilarious-- the quality translations are important.

Tolle is a kind of Zen-related too ("be fully in the moment"), and a good Westernized approach I supposed without getting into byzantine explanations.

The Gita cracked me up because it is used to justify war-- basically, Kirshna says to Arjuna "You can't really kill your cousins, so kill them!". I've read also the Yoga Sutra but never the Pali canon-- might try some day.

From Terrence McKenna I read "Food of the Gods" about a decade or more ago, and I feel he continues the line that Aldous Huxley started in Heaven and Hell/ The Doors of Perception -- interesting book, haven't read others.

Hesse blew my mind when I was 18 or 19, particularly Demian and Steppenwolf, the Glass Bead game bored me before I could finish, but I loved some of his essays. I don't know if I could read those Hesse again, it's one of those things like trying to get back with your first girlfriend and realizing there was a reason why you two broke up.

Hesse's major wellspring is I believe Carl Jung, who was a bigger mystic and thinker than him, but not a novelist. Still, I hear Jung's autobiography was pretty good and I might look for it at some point.

I only read RAW recently and it came across more as a comedic writer than as a philosopher, though clearly the guy was smart as fuck. Still, being already familiar with a lot of what he talks about made it less mind-blowing than if I had read this when I was 18. It would have had a different effect.

RE: Evolving consciousness, etc: I'm skeptical, very skeptical, when it comes to such claims. I've seen WAY TOO MANY charlatans to trust anybody who claims to have found the secret of life (or whatever) and I tend to side with the views found on Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" with one very big difference-- I don't find a godless universe necessarily leads to nihilism (which is what Monty Python sort of goes after); I think one can find supreme value in life even when said life has no meaning or god or any of that. Does that make me a Nietzschean? An existentialist? I have no fucking idea.

These days I'm interested in Zen and its practice, not because I believe it will lead me anywhere, but simply because I'm interested in the skills it provides to the mind. Whatever happens from acquiring said skills (or "un-skills" if you wanna buy the concept of beginner's mind) I have no idea of what it is or where it leads to. But I find that doing zazen is good for my brain. I'm not interested in enlightenment, nirvana (of any kind), or saving all sentient beings quite yet.

By the way, if you are highly religious or have religious inclinations or rely on some sort of divinity for your life's meaning, beware of reading Nietzsche-- it can make you temporarily mad.