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In the ever-growing genre of enlightenment literature, one can perhaps isolate three major sub-categories: There are the popular question and answer format books; there are the various accounts of awakening; and there are the books about enlightenment, very often written by unenlightened or soon-to-be-enlightened authors. Jed McKenna's book, Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing, while it encompasses the other sub-categories, is in a category all of its own. The style—a rich, evocative narrative—has echoes of that popular classic, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but with a difference; Jed McKenna is upfront and tells us that he is enlightened. It is so. Period. So this is not a book about putting the pieces together, about the search; it is a lucid account of an enlightened teacher's current life—his musings, his actions (or non-actions) and his interactions with students in the aftermath of his discovery; which is the simplicity of living the paradigm shift. And while it presents what for many caterpillars is taboo—an enlightened teacher talking about himself ("If there is no ego," they smartly say, nodding in the direction of Krishnamurti,"how could he refer to himself?")—the book is actually a radical departure from the mythology of enlightenment. In my view, the authenticity of McKenna's enlightenment is in the fact that he is able to talk about himself and his responses to others in much the same way as caterpillars do, but all the while subtly showing that it is a fiction engaging with other fictions. In this there is no sense of superiority, of spiritual one-upmanship, just plain Truth if you're willing to see. One might say that one of the achievements of the book is in showing, in the very act of writing, how enlightenment is the skillful use of ego.
There is so much more that one could say about this
fine book, but to do so would be to reduce the pleasure for the
reader. But I should add this: If, after reading this book, you
should suddenly have the urge to meet McKenna (which for many caterpillars
is an understandable reaction), then I'm sure McKenna would agree
with me that the book, in this respect, has Kriben
Pillay, D.Phil.
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