Review of 'Jed Mckennas Theory Of Everything The Enlightened Perspective' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
The title is taken from Stephen Hawking, famous physicist and perhaps womanizer, but this book is its opposite. The universe, that Dr. Hawking is modeling is declared a fake, a dream, Maya. Instead, consciousness is asserted as the only thing we can actually know exists. It is who we are (if there IS a "we").
I wish to defend Hawking for a moment. I'm with McKenna on c-rex but I'm with Hawking on model-dependent realism.. c-rex is a model as is anything you can express in words, and a fine one too, but McKenna never says this. He's a smart guy so I know he'd agree, but he'd hedge.
He admits that, having nowhere else to go, he slipped back into consensus reality--in it, but not of it. I agree that there's nowhere to go outside of consciousness but there are other places to go than where he seems …
The title is taken from Stephen Hawking, famous physicist and perhaps womanizer, but this book is its opposite. The universe, that Dr. Hawking is modeling is declared a fake, a dream, Maya. Instead, consciousness is asserted as the only thing we can actually know exists. It is who we are (if there IS a "we").
I wish to defend Hawking for a moment. I'm with McKenna on c-rex but I'm with Hawking on model-dependent realism.. c-rex is a model as is anything you can express in words, and a fine one too, but McKenna never says this. He's a smart guy so I know he'd agree, but he'd hedge.
He admits that, having nowhere else to go, he slipped back into consensus reality--in it, but not of it. I agree that there's nowhere to go outside of consciousness but there are other places to go than where he seems to have ended up. Enlightenment really is the booby prize for him but perhaps it needn't be.
Still, it's fun (if you're like me) to read as McKenna knows how to turn a phrase.