Radical Non-Duality and The First Step, a Jed McKenna's Legacy
Looking at Two Key Concepts from Jed McKenna's Works
HEADS-UP
This is not a case study of someone’s else work and it is not me relying on someone’s else authority to convey a point. This is looking at someone’s else great work in order to give you some scope on this whole Awakening thing, similar to what we do with the works of past and present artists in this publication.
McKenna happens to be the OG of sources for this topic – a lot of terminology I use was coined in his books and articles – so looking at his works makes a lot of sense, but it is not something to be taken as a sort of “First Principle” or “Tenet”; in other words, it is not about the source, it’s all about the Journey, your Journey, the Journey of the reader. Intermediaries - our beloved Buddhas - will have to be released at some point along the way for the Journey to continue.
TIME-IN
Every choice regarding the process of Awakening, imagining for a moment that there is such a thing as choosing, is made before the Non-Dual Insight, once you get to that, it’s game over. After that, it’s either all the way to Truth-Realization or most of the way to Human Adulthood.
There are a lot of inherent contraddictions, so I’ll try to use McKenna’s works as common ground for us to move through.
In his works, McKenna implied that there is no turning back once you’ve gotten to “The First Step” - a first iteration of the Non-Dual Realization concept, I suppose - but in later works he wrote that the desirable finish line - Human Adulthood – is to be gained after the reaching of the Non-Dual Realization (which is the only First Step there is, to be clear). In other words, we’re discussing wether the Non-Dual Insight is the first and last step, the starting point of the lenghty processing that culminates in the end of dualistic perception, or a realization whose power can be wielded or not wielded as one desires.
Human Adulthood as described in the “Enlightenment Trilogy” seems to be a contraddicting concept with the Human Adulthood McKenna talked about In later works - both the “Jed Talks Trilogy” and articles on Jedvaita.com.
To envision the build-up, the reaching and the magnitude of the Non-Dual Realization, I’ll make a quick example.
Kevin has a beautiful family. Wife, kids, a beautiful house, friends to invite at said beautiful house, etc. One day he wakes up and on his way to work he happens to entertain the thought that it is kind of peculiar that he has such a great life when at a couple thousand kilometres from home there’s wars and genocides and horrors being committed with no shortage of the whole catalog of worst war crimes mankind is capable of carrying on. It is so peculiar, in fact, that it seems way too odd. Why Kevin and not them? What’s so different about him? He won the lottery when he came out of a western woman’s womb, daughter of a respected lawyer, married to a hardworking teacher, a luminous future laid out for him since the very beginning; why wasn’t he born in a family of refugees on the run from a country ruled by warlords?
He resists these thoughts, but they don’t stop. “What is wrong with me”, he thinks, and then another thought pops out of nowhere: “Nothing’s wrong with you, maybe you’ve just been kinda stupid your whole life”. Damn, maybe he’s right. He who? Who is that? It has to be Kevin, I mean, who else? But it’s not really Kevin, why would he call himself stupid after all the accomplishments he obtained in life? He was on top of his game a couple of weeks ago, now he’s saying to himself that he’s always been an idiot. And why can’t he stand his loved one talking about furniture no more? He used to like that - sure, a little boring after a while - but he loved being complimented on his good taste for vintage coffee tables and dining sets. Now he gives zero fucks. He can only think about the fact that he’s always been blind and kinda knew it, but never gave that thought any second thoughts. And what’s worse, he has no idea about what’s going on, what is he even wrong about? Everything was right, now it doesn’t seem to be anymore. Why now? Why him? Why can’t John go though an existential crisis at 35? Shit, he’s 3 years older than Kev and look at him go, look at him smiling and talking about LeBron’s performance at the Olympics. He should have these thoughts, not Kev, “you’re a nice guy, you have a family, responsabilities, you can’t afford this shit”, Kevin ponders.
“But wait”, he thinks, “who the fuck is John? I mean, of course I know who John is, but who the fuck is he for real? Behind all those smiles and talks and shit, who is he? Does he even know himself? And what does it matter, really? Why am I talking about John? Am I avoiding confronting my own situation?”.
Kevin fights off this crisis, but to no avail. It gets worse and worse every week and every month until going on with his current situation seems quite impossible. Nothing makes sense, everything he thought was rock-solid is now a big question mark.
Ok, for the sake of keeping this post under the 10 minutes read-time mark, that’ll be enough. Our Kev eventually gets to the point where he sees that maybe John and loved ones and coffee tables and job and all that is not really out there, but “in there”, and everything from that point of view seems to make sense. Of course, he doesn’t know it yet, and he still believes all sorts of things, and he’s sure there’s a lot more to it, but that’s the whole deal - the Non-Dual Realization. This is the thing. The magnitude of this realization is what differentiates the two paradigms – Asleep and Awake. Of course, Kev’s not Awake at that point, he’s at the beginning of the Non-Dual part of the Journey, but everything needed is contained in there, the Pandora’s Box of insights.
TIME OUT
This is the point where I remind you that you’re not supposed to believe anything I’m saying. Belief doesn’t account for anything here. This is something you either see for yourself or don’t, so if you’re not at the point where you see this, than that’s perfectly fine and I’d advise you to carry on with whatever belief you feel comfortable with, with not the slightest trace of irony intended.
Ok, back to it.
So, how do you manage not to go through the whole process at that point? That part is the tragic part of the journey, the most brutal, the most painful, so if you somehow get through that, how do you not get to Truth? Not like you want to, but like the damage has already been done. Luckily, this stuff seems pretty dialed in. Your level of perspective will be exactly the one you’re meant to have for the exploration and expression of your life-pattern, the “core” of your personal maze. Everything needed is contained within that initial realization, everything else is just about processing what that realization actually means.
“All good questions, at their heart, are one question: ‘I know not-two is true, but what does it actually mean?’ No one cares about the sound of one hand clapping or their face before they were born, we care about knowing what the hell’s going on around here – and what’s not.”
- Jed McKenna, “B.Y.O.G.”
Truth-Realization would be the perspective-maximum, and in the case of the individual behind McKenna, that was required for him to bring the books into being from his perspective - I guess. That’s the only way it makes sense, Truth-Realization being the complete annihilation of the individual and therefore nonsensical from the perspective of “living a life”.
A premature (and natural) stop that allows you to keep some basic attachment to your reality would be your departure point of Human Adulthood, where you can keep developing and exploring your life-pattern, now ‘in the world but not of the world’, that kind of thing.
What does “keep some basic attachment” mean? It means you don’t want to be nothingness. If you think you can want that, think better, because you have no idea what you’re looking at. Truth is a metaphorical blank slate. An infinite blank slate. Why and how would you want that? This whole creative endeavor you’re in – life, pattern – is the solution to Truth, not the other way around. Getting yourself free of Ego’s demands and constraints is the whole point, destroying everything in your newly discovered mind-world is both pointless and beyond the point.
(Don’t freak out about this, all is well. Relax. The process is actually self-regulating on an ongoing basis and you won’t face what you can’t face until you’re ready to face it. And by that time, it won’t seem that bad anymore.)
Lisa from Spiritual Warfare - McKenna’s third book of the Enlightenment Trilogy - is McKenna’s literary exemplification of the transition to “Human Adulthood”, but, surprisingly, she does not get to the non-dual insight. Her transition is wholly within “the dreamstate”, she never even catches a glimpse of the non-dual insight. It’s one thing to smash out of predetermined and deeply hated ego-traits (or characters, or facades, whatever), everyone can do that and everyone, at some level, wants to do that. It’s a whole other thing to stare at the heart of solipsism all by yourself - the non-dual realization. That’s a completely different thing, in no way whatsoever relatable to the rearranging of ego’s wardrobe.
In Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, the second book of the Enlightenment Trilogy, McKenna has Julie, a character from the first book who’s gotten to what he calls “The First Step”, emerge into the “light” of Human Adulthood way past her Non-Dual Realization point, a step that anticipates her further Truth-Realization at the end of the book.
“Once you take the First Step, the rest is sure to follow”, he writes, referring to Truth-Realization, but Julie’s “First Step” in the first book is somewhat trivial and it is definitively not the Non-Dual Realization. Something is not right. Being The First Step a concept in a story it must have its own inherent limitations, as well as the story, but still, it could be useful to bring this into a bit more focus.
Julie’s First Step is she realizing that the whole “spiritual” thing is a hoax, “opium of the people”, that kind of thing, and that nothing lies in that direction. That’s her grand disillusionment, and it is indeed trivial if confronted with the non-dual realization.
In the same book, McKenna takes Captain Ahab from Moby Dick as an exemplification of the First Step; Ahab launching himself at a whale with a six-inch knife in a do-or-die act of frenzy. That’s certainly a closer literary representation of the Non-Dual Event, with a clear difference that McKenna himself has widely expanded on in his later works: it’s not really an act of battle-frenzy, but of clear-seeing, that clear-seeing bringing an inevitable Surrendering which later becomes an Unconditional Surrendering. It's not a Surrendering out of fear or panick or “weakness”, it’s seeing clearly your situation, honestly, with no protective filters. That’s basically the processing of the Non-Dual Event.
To end the “conflicting concepts” dilemma, I would advise, for practical purposes, to see it like this: The First Step, as intended by McKenna, is the Non-Dual Realization. There’s no essential difference between the two concepts. What happens to Lisa in Spiritual Warfare is the equivalent of Zen’s “emptying the cup”, a concept that might be useful to analyze in a separate article but which does not represent the Non-Dual Insight point of departure.
So: Where do you go once you’ve absorbed and processed the non-dual insight?Can you go back into the world? No you can’t, literally, it’s not a choice anymore. A whole lot of questions about fear have already been answered at that point, so it is not a question of fearful inertia anymore, that part is behind you.
Where do you go from there? You go where you’re not supposed to go further anymore, wherever that place might be for you. Maybe your intellectual ferocity leads you to explore and express what you found out in your journey. Maybe you keep one or two key relationships that are an essential part of your life-pattern. Maybe your life is arranged in a way where you must do something specific which requires you to be engaged in the “dreamstate”. That end-point is different for every life-pattern/person, but the level of perspective required to get to that point would be similar for anyone because that perspective is dictated by the non-dual insight and its processing, not by your own preferences, opinions or beliefs. You can’t be a Human Adult and think that Self is true or the Universe is true, just saying.
Truth-Realization, Enlightenment, is the same for everyone who comes to that. Not to venture into zenny or advaity terminology, but it’s quite literally “no one” that comes to that. You don’t go out in the ‘nothingness’ because it’s not the type of thing where you can step into, since there’s no “you” and no “it”, but now you’ve seen this without any possibility of error or doubt. To do that, to really do that, you need levels of discontent toward your self and the nature of illusion – in a word, Appearance - that just aren’t part of the deal, luckily. They’re counterproductive in the extreme, they make no sense, and are out of your control. If Truth-Realization is your end-point once you reach the Non-Dual Insight, than that’s what you’ll do given enough time, but don’t worry about it, it’s not up to you. Whatever the case may be, you’ll end up where you’re supposed to end up, with no possibility of error occurring.
Even with all that said, at the end of the day, everything I or McKenna or anyone else says or writes is a concept. A concept, in the context of Awakening and in that context only, is only useful if used to eliminate another concept and is then thrown out in the dirt, as Top Guru Ramesh Balsekar said. This Journey is all about overcoming fears and using concepts to destroy other concepts, with the not-so-minor technicality that everything in your dream-world is a concept, so that destroying a concept destroys a piece of your world too.
Take what you need from anyone and no more. Do not make someone a big thing or you’ll just have a bad time releasing him/her when the time comes. Take what you need, thank him/her, move on. “Teacher” is just another concept.