Hope For Enlightenment

File under: Blogs of Note and Folk Theories

We began publishing this blog as a way express our frustration with common depictions of the what is called "enlightenment." Most commercially-successful gurus use these ideas to promote themselves to potential donators devotees. We believe these ideas are more likely preventing enlightenment, and so we harry the gurus who greedily pollute the world with this ignorance.

Over the course of the last 5 years, we've corralled these notions into a "folk theory of enlightenment." Recently, we've caught echoes of this idea in the words of Dzogchen rinpoches who are quoted by the bad-ass Buddhists of Twitter, but today we found the folk theory stated as a list of expectations about enlightenment on a blog called Open Enlightenment:

• Enlightenment is the transformation into a God, and it only happens to very special people.
• Enlightenment will confer specific knowledge of everything, ever. The enlightened person knows what happened at the beginning of the universe, everything that is happening now, and everything that will happen right up to the very end. The enlightened person can provide an answer to all the Big Questions, because he/she knows God personally. He/she’s in on the plan.
• Enlightenment is the terrifying knowledge of Absolutely Nothing.
• Enlightenment is the death of the self while still alive.
• Enlightenment can only happen to men.
• Enlightenment is the complete destruction of the universe, right in front of your eyes.
• Enlightenment is a shocking, earth-shattering, cataclysmic, reality-tearing, mind-destroying, adrenalin-fueled mystical explosion.
• Enlightenment is the realisation that the world is an illusion, and so the enlightened person can walk through walls, fly, teleport, and perform all kinds of other miracles.
• Enlightenment is waking up from the dream of reality.
• Enlightenment is knowledge of heaven, hell, past lives, spiritual realms, Gods, Goddesses, dead people, angels, elves, pixies and ascended masters.
• Enlightenment is the end of suffering, pain, depression, despair, anger, hate, revulsion and disgust. It will heal my damaged self, and preserve who I am for ever in eternal bliss. I will never hurt again.
• Enlightenment is perpetual bliss.
• Enlightenment is an incomprehensible non-experience that promises nothing, and it is debatable if it actually has any benefit.

A few months ago we published a similar list, which at the time we called the folk theory of guru-based spirituality. The idea has come a long way since then, and now that we're working on a conference presentation about the folk theory of enlightenment, finding Alan's blog has been a great confirmation.

Open Enlightenment is a lighthouse spinning a beam of high-intensity clarity for those lost in the morass of myth, miracle-mongering and superstition that is the commercial spiritual marketplace today. It definitely should be read by anyone who seeks to understand enlightenment in the context of what a big-time guru is telling them. It's so good that we may just decide to retire from this blog entirely.

Updated Folk Theory Of Guru-Based Spirituality

File under: Folk Theories

The universe just handed us a shiny new weapon against superstition and ignorance in guru-based spiritual culture: the idea of the folk theory. We first encountered the concept in George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Philosophy in the Flesh, the subject matter—that all philosophies of mind in the West are dead dog wrong, and why—is a bit outside the scope of this blog. But the book is an absolute treasure of clarity about the mind and how it works, and consequently, how societies and cultures are structured as well.

A folk theory is any set of "common sense" beliefs about something we experience together in our lives. The idea that our personalities can survive death is a folk theory. To a great majority of folks, the idea that we'll survive death—going to heaven, hell, or who knows where—is simple common sense. But there is no proof of life after death beyond personal anecdote, and neuroscience is now showing us that these experiences of the supernatural can be reproduced in a lab with magnetic fields, deep brain stimulation, and simple tricks of perception.

Thus, we present our list of the ideas that make up a folk theory we've identified in guru-based spirituality. This is the tool box of any flimflamming, big-time guru. See if you can come up with some [more] of your own!

Folk Theory of Guru-Based Spirituality

• Enlightenment can be transmitted supernaturally
• Enlightenment is the culmination of something
• Enlightenment entails knowing everything
• Enlightenment causes all thought to cease
• Enlightenment is love
• Only a guru can bestow enlightenment
• The guru is within yourself
• Being God means having some or all of "God's" powers
• Because you are God, you can affect things by thought alone
• Because you are connected to everything, you can affect things by thought alone
• Everything is connected
• You are a spark of the divine
• You are guided by a higher self
• You create your own reality
• Everything in the world is an illusion
• Divinity can be subverted by the flesh
• Good and evil are forces locked in an eternal struggle
• Good always prevails
• Things will be better in the future
• Things were better in the past
• People and things can be holy
• Ancient wisdom is better
• A just, omnipotent God exists
• Everything happens according to a Plan
• You'll get back every good and bad thing you do
• Sex is a loss to the spirit
• Sex is a boon to the spirit
• Technology is harmful
• Only the heart knows what is true
• The mind is an enemy of the spirit
• The spirit is an energy
• Personality survives death

We've got a list on our desktop and are [still] itching to add to it. Please suggest away in the comments.