Open Enlightenment

The Folk Theory of Enlightenment: An Interview with Jody Radzik

Jody Radzik is the infamous webmaster of Guruphiliac, a site that sheds light on the scams, crimes and abuses perpetrated by the mad, bad and sad hucksters and would-be gurus of the enlightenment scene. Jody recently gave a talk on the Folk Theory of Enlightenment (FToE) at the Science and Non-duality Conference 2009, details of which can be found at his new blog, Shimmering Dead End.

As a fan of his work, I was delighted when Jody agreed to the following interview, where we discuss his spiritual career, the negativity he frequently receives from telling the truth, working with Kali, and the FToE.

ALAN: Hello Jody, thanks for agreeing to this interview. You describe yourself as a ‘Self-Styled Pundit of Post Neo-Vedanta and Neurononduality’. Can you tell us a little bit about how you ended up this way?

JODY: The neurononduality part comes from the fact that I’ve been very taken by the current enterprise of cognitive neuroscience. In particular, the ideas of Thomas Metzinger in his book, The Ego Tunnel, and the embodied mind theory of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their book, Philosophy in the Flesh. My life in nonduality culture—one which has been framed either positively or negatively by Vivekananda’s neo-Vedanta—has had three movements. The discovery phase began with a bad mushroom trip and led to a summer orbiting a new age cult in Malibu. Eventually, I entered junior college determined to be a transpersonal psychologist. A component of my plan was to spend two years at a yoga ashram in Southern California, but I left after one. Just short of a year later, I moved to Northern California to continue transpersonal studies. During this time I took initiation as a tantric shakta from a swami of the Ramakrishna Math. I then dropped out of school and began working as a graphic designer for the surfwear industry. I also fell quite easily into the beginnings of the rave scene in San Francisco.

The rave phase lasted about 10 years, during which time I somewhat compulsively engaged in a kind of tantric devotional practice with Ma Kali Dakshineswari as my object of devotion and emulation. This followed a general pattern that could best be described as bipolar. I also did lots of meditation (maybe it should have been medication) waiting for and riding on public transportation. When I developed a moderately severe case of social anxiety, I began to see a therapist who was also a Sufi sheikh. After 4 years working with him, he interpreted a dream of mine in such a way as to lead to a sudden clarity about nondual awareness. That moment was accompanied by the recognition that all the ideas I had picked up after 11 years of study were wrong, as well as any other idea I could have possibly held about it.

This led to a critical phase, and I began to debate these ideas where I encountered them online, fuelled by a kind of simmering rage I still don’t understand. The culmination of this was my blog called Guruphiliac. Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people and a good deal of confirmation, but also a lot more disagreement and opposition. And since I’ve often been a snarky creep to those whose ideas I’ve opposed, I’ve acquired a bad reputation of sorts online.

ALAN: I’ve often moaned on this blog about the amount of flak we receive (mostly from Buddhists for some reason) for talking openly about our experience of enlightenment, and especially how it doesn’t line up with the common expectations of this phenomenon within many traditions; but it’s nothing compared to the seemingly unending number of websites dedicated to giving you a bad name! Does this ever get you down? What would you say is your motivation for enduring the constant shit-flinging?

JODY: I have flung shit with the best of them, so in some ways, I had it coming. That is to say, it was a mistake to be so confrontational when I was being so. I was carrying a simmering resentment against the ideas I disliked and the folks who argued them. Hopefully, most of that has been worked out. Twitter has helped a lot. Folks don’t have to endure the slams you can make on a comment board, so you’ve got to engage in a much less aggressive manner. It’s making me soft in my old age, and I like it.

Most of the attack sites are the work of just a few people who happened to have a lot of time on their hands. They’ve taken things I’ve said out of the context that still exists in the cloud, so folks can read in context much of what I’d still say today. I’ve done little wrong other than to be a snarky jerk to some of those I’ve disagreed with, as well as taking on the task to poke the sacred cow of gurudom where it intersects with folk theories of enlightenment. I feel clear with the universe about what’s gone on so far.

ALAN: You mention that you have been a devotee of Kali. Can you tell us a little about the goddess and your history together (do you consider her an indispensable part of your process?), whether you still consider yourself her devotee, and exactly how a prospective devotee might go about worshipping her?

JODY: I learned about Kali from reading Ramakrishna. I was living at a yoga ashram in the mountains in Southern California when I decided that I was going to take Kali as my Beloved, my Ishta Devata, like Ramakrishna. But while Ramakrishna saw Kali as his Mother, I decided I was going to be Her lover. This is all said in the spirit of applied belief in the service of devotion, which can be a very powerful transformational force in one’s life. I would not contend there is any physically real Kali out there, or even an ethereal one. Kali as I see Her is the entire universe as my life mate. The iconography was attractive to me, so I employed it as a kind of relationship wormhole. In the context of my personal phenomenology, my relationship with Her is very real. It’s not like I’m hearing the voice of God, but in my feeling body there is a strong sense of being with Her. I suppose this could be the result of the longtime employment of the practice, resulting in a kind of self-conditioning. But other than a few crushes on unattainable women, it’s worked pretty well for me, to my own sense of things in my life.

AAAAARRGGHHH!

There is a Vedantic model of the universe expressed in the iconography of Ma Kali Dakshineswari. Kali stands on Shiva. She’s pretty much ready to slay anything, and Shiva is gone in nirvakalpa samadhi. It’s the manifest universe, what some might call Maya, resting on the unmanifest, nondual absolute, or Brahman. The beauty of the icon is that it weights the manifest as much as the nondual. The idea that Maya is illusion only makes sense from the regard of samadhi, in my opinion. I don’t care how nondual you are, if you step in front of a truck, it’s illusoriness isn’t going to save you. The truck is Ma. The world is real for all practical purposes. You may as well try to get in good with it.

Kali standing on Shiva also represents the relationship between the active and immanent elements of reality, Shakti and Brahman. Ramakrishna used to say, “Brahman and Shakti are like fire and its power to burn.” It’s the oneness of all existence expressed as the intersection of the universe’s gender polarity and the spectrum of all the existent matter, energy, and activity in the universe.

In terms of what a beginning bhakta should do, I’m convinced pretty much any icon will work in place of Kali. It can be one that is culturally historical, or one entirely made up. It’s about the application of the belief, not the content. I picked Kali because I’m attracted to strong women. Someone else might pick Shiva, or Jesus, or their childhood fluffy bunny. Quite often, folks employ dead gurus for the job. Perhaps even more employ the living ones. But as corrupt as any of those living gurus might be, as representations of divinity, I believe they will work every bit as well as anything else anyone can come up with, provided the devotee is sincere. I suppose in that way the worst of gurus are still useful for something.

As far as Kali specifically, based on my own experience, it can be a very wild ride. Not that I can actually blame Her, but I’ve had several close shaves in my life and have ruined my reputation in several markets. There has been a kind of compulsiveness to my life as a shakta that I would not wish on anyone. I’m not saying it would be like that for anyone else, but I should note that there is a general agreement among Kali devotees that to use this particular iconography often entails a series of intense experiences that may not sit well with certain personality types. She’s not for those looking for a path of complete peace and tranquility, in my opinion.

ALAN: You certainly have some balls Jody! My limited experience with Kali and the stories I’ve heard from fellow devotees are enough to convince me that devotion to Kali isn’t for the faint of heart. But then neither is taking on the guru scene single handed! (I wonder how much of that is down to working with Kali? Might explain where the ‘simmering rage’ comes from!)

To me, your overall spiritual development seems to concur with the many classical descriptions of the process of self-realisation. Do you recognise this process in your own experience, and would you describe the experience with the Sufi Sheikh as enlightenment (read: abiding non-dual awareness)?

JODY: There was definitely a process, characterized in part by traumatic accidents (25 ft. fall, being run over by a car, slamming into a rock on skis,) and a series of psychedelically-induced plateaus. But there was extensive depth inquiry by the Jungian map with an excellent guide, and a long-suffering guru who didn’t really care to know what I was doing as long as I was saying my mantra, paying my bills, and showing up on a Sunday every now and then. Basically, he trusted the Kundalini as She was throwing me around.

I find myself working with a kind of direct seeing of nondual awareness, but I still feel very much this person in this body living this life and seeing no reason to deny it. To most, that’s not enlightenment.

ALAN: But the sad fact is, ‘most’ actually have a bad view of enlightenment, which brings us nicely to your recent formulation of the Folk Theory of Enlightenment (FToE), as a means of demonstrating the false beliefs that inform the dangerous and demented behaviours you expose on Guruphiliac. Can you tell us more about that?

JODY: The FToE is basically any set of notions that arise with the notion: “I am God.” I’d say that’s what folks popularly believe enlightenment is, becoming God. The idea of enlightenment as a kind of divine perfection—which in one sense it is—is in the more general sense completely unrealistic, and tragically, occluding the truth that everyone believes they are seeking. Unfortunately, I have no proof that any of this is true outside my own personal phenomenology. But, I haven’t found much disagreement with the more spare nondual ideologies such as Advaita, Zen and Dzogchen as I interpret them.

No ego is a no go.

ALAN:  In the chart opposite you divide the FToE into essentially two parts. ‘I am nothing’, or ‘I am God/All’. Can you talk about these in a little more detail? Where can we see examples of these two perspectives in mainstream enlightenment teachings?

JODY: You’ll find the “I am God/All” metaphor employed in the myth-making and marketing of the more successful commercial gurus, many of whom are from India. The basic premise is that because the guru has realized God, they can manipulate the lives of their devotees by supernatural means. This works great as a business driver, but I believe the idea leaves many of the devotees believing their enlightenment will result in the same powers. Thus, they miss who they always are as they are always expecting themselves to become someone else.

I believe the “I am nothing” trope arises when minds attempt to model the notion of emptiness. This has folks setting themselves against what they believe is that part of themselves that cognizes. This results in a kind of convoluted identity logic that would best any pretzel, as well as providing a rich source of occluding ideas, such as that enlightenment and verbal thought cannot coexist. Were this actually true, no guru would be saying anything.

Another bugaboo of mine is the idea that self-realization will lead to a pure and desireless state. I think it’s clear that nondual realized folk have desires, albeit less strongly held in many cases. But it’s quite apparent that many of the devotees believe their gurus are beyond reproach precisely because they are believed to be absolutely pure. The problem I see with this is that it leaves gurus off the hook for whatever they do—good or bad, and it gets people shooting for impossible and unforgiving self-definitions in their search, which again may cause them to keep overlooking the ongoing truth of their own nondual awareness.

ALAN: Evidently the FToE is an inaccurate description of the phenomenon of awakening. Given your grasp of where most theories of enlightenment go wrong (which it is important to remember that many genuine authorities on awakening have never ascribed to), what would you say is a more accurate theory of enlightenment? What should the FToE be replaced with?

JODY: I’d replace it with the idea that there is no theory of enlightenment that can be expressed directly. [However, some kinds of oblique reference, like koans, seem to have value when employed skillfully.] While a teacher may understand the metaphorical nature of his/her pointings, they need to understand that metaphor works by way of image-idea construction in the minds of the students, which I believe lead to notions which occlude, all happening entirely within the subconscious mind. I don’t believe there’s much we can do about this process except to try to eliminate the material it works with in the construction of the occluding ideas, which is pretty much what Zen shoots for, in my opinion, as well as traditional Advaita Vedanta.

ALAN: Well Jody, it’s always a pleasure talking to someone else with a genuine interest in this stuff and a good deal of experience to boot, especially someone with a story as entertaining as yours. Thanks again for the interview!

JODY: Thanks for helping me get the word out about the possible negative consequences of folk theories of enlightenment!

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