Spiritual Enlightenment – the Damndest Thing by Jed McKenna
Jed McKenna claims to be enlightened, and he talks about his views on this state in his book Spiritual Enlightenment – the damndest thing. When I first read this a couple of years ago, it challenged some of my beliefs and opinions. I’ve gone back and looked at it again recently, and the claims he makes no longer sound quite that earth shattering. After the first reading I came to the conclusion that the person who wrote it was probably enlightened, but now I’m not even sure what enlightened means. The one thing that hasn’t change is that Jed McKenna has some interesting things to say. What follows is something that I wrote about this book after reading it for the first time.
Who is Jed McKenna?
Jed McKenna is not like your usual enlightened guru. He does not claim to be any type of higher being – or to even be holy. He has just realized some truths about the reality of the universe, and this has changed how he interacts with the world. Jed McKenna does not even seem to be his real name, and his true identity is a bit of a mystery.
Unlike most other spiritual teachers, McKenna does not claim that becoming enlightened is such a swell thing. In fact, he ponders if being caught up in the world of illusion may even be preferable. He provides a view of universe that most people will not want to believe is true. He claims that the idea that the self is a delusion and so is duality – there is only one thing. Not that he is saying anything particular new here – this is the same teaching given by most of the non duality crowd and the Buddha made a similar claim almost 2,600 years ago. The difference with Jed McKenna is that he does not heavily promote enlightenment as something worth having.
Jed McKenna is not an atheist, but he dismisses all religions and philosophies as being practically worthless. I fully agree with his claim that people can only find out the truth for themselves. He admits that all belief systems can be used as a path to enlightenment but that the truth inside them is too obscure for the average Joe (or Joanna) to grasp. Many of his ideas seem to be close to Buddhism, but he is as equally dismissive of this as every other belief system. He really does believe that if you see the Buddha on your path you should kill him. Jed does acknowledge though, that the practice of real Zen may possibly take people a long way on the journey to enlightenment, but eventually even Buddhism needs to be ditched in order to continue the journey. He also qualifies this further by saying that there are very few people (maybe none) who actually practice real Zen. Mr. McKenna suggests that all belief systems should be open to more scrutiny and that they should be judged on the number of enlightened beings they produce – no argument from me here.
Review of Spiritual Enlightenment; the Damndest Thing
The thing that I most took from this book is the idea that there is nothing wrong with us and that the big answers just aren’t there to be found – at least not the big answers we thing are there. Life is entertainment that is best enjoyed if you don’t ask too many questions or try too hard to find out how it all works. Once you know how a movie is put together then it sort of ruins the enjoyment, and the same is true with life. Jed McKenna believes that self is an illusion and that we are all just characters in poorly acted soap opera. We can have the truth about reality or we can just continue as we are – ultimately it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.
Jed McKenna may be a huge fraud, but I don’t think that really matters so much – in fact, I don’t think it matters at all. Some readers may even decide that he is an arrogant asshole, but this matters even less. What I don’t doubt is that there is a good deal of wisdom in his words. I have my own philosophies which I use as tools to make life that bit more enjoyable. This book has reminded me that ultimately all they are is tools and not the truth.
I think the thing that struck me most with your post is that this author says that Buddhism is a belief system. It is not. The Buddha himself constantly teaches that we should not take his word for anything, but to investigate for yourself. So ditching Buddhism doesn’t really make much sense. It is simply a set of teachings and a philosophy, not a belief system or religion…
Hi Amy, I agree with you. I think it would be fair to say though that there are plenty of people who use Buddhism as their religion.
The McKenna books are rewritten in the fantasy about true stories that actually happened. Most of the teachings are derivatives from a man named Richard Rose. The author that wrote the books was a student of Rose. In fact, in the third book, there is mention about a spiritual like-minded person named Brett. Brett was a metaphor for Mr. Rose and the author’s relationship with him. The date of Mr. Rose’s funeral and when the author was writing about Brett’s funeral are the same. Even though the author wrote in the fiction in attempts to disguise himself, there are many trails with footprints that can lead to him. The author is a spiritual teacher in America and almost all of McKenna’s teaching methods he utilizes. Even with the second book that is dedicated to the works of the book Moby Dick, this author and student of Mr. Rose has read Moby Dick over fifty times and views the book as a spiritual treatise. He just recently gave a teaching to a group of people and he taught from the movie The Matrix. similar to what Jed did. The evidence that can be found to locate the true author of these book is numerous. Start with Rose and then do a process of elimination of all of the old students of Rose. Then one will stand out. What is perplexing to find though is that the author does have many beliefs. What is not surprising is that this self proclaimed enlightened person has a huge ego similar to Jed. Good hunting.
Thanks Shawn, for a long time I suspected that Jed McKenna might be Adyashanti. I’ve never heard of Richard Rose, but I’ll investigate him now. Thanks for that.
Dear Paul,
Many people think the author is Adyashanti so you shouldn’t feel alone. I can see why people would think this but he’s not the one. The author that I speak of even use to skydive. In fact he had a serious skydive encounter simlilar to what Jed speaks about. The problem is that he doesn’t fit the image of what our minds would want to think, where Adyashanti does. So don’t go by first impressions. Dig deeper.
Shawn