Thaddeus Golas

I have been reading Thaddeus Golas. He is good, though he claims to be an idler! Well if that is so we are kindred souls, he and I, we share the same pre occupation with indolence. Some say it is Tamasic (gross and lethargic), this languor, but I believe it is beautiful. Inertia is pure mass, it stays put, and it doesn’t bring in disturbances. The Indian deity Siva is Tamas personified sits in meditation all the time and only occasionally goes into that dance of his.

It is called the Thandava-The cosmic dance.

Well really that is when the trouble starts.

I like the guy, Thaddeus that is.

He writes magnificently for all his laziness and vows to do it a thousand times over (my!) if some one was influenced to move towards light by it. Not a very lazy statement by any standard. But should I recommend him to you? A tricky question that. Perhaps no one has the right to recommend anything to any one. May be every body is aware of everything internally and needs no recommendations!

But you don’t believe it, do you? We have all been led at some time or the other. Oftentimes we were glad that it was so and some other times we were pissed mad about it. Who is this dumb head telling us what to do!

There are receptive and hostile moments in life it seems.

Coming back to Thaddeus, his “Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment” is eminently readable. The beginning paragraph (which he lays much store by) might not capture you initially. It has too many holes in it. But can you talk about the ‘whole’ without producing some holes here and there?

[They say every electron creates a hole when it is produced! Don’t say hmm, it is expected. The theosophists called it the holes of koilon (Whatever that is). It is simple logic is it not, every depression has a manic state and every depth has a height. Sometimes logic can get so terribly boring.]

Anyway Thaddeus starts off with a bang (not the ‘big bang’ mind you, this whack is much more primary).

And I quote:

“We are equal beings and the universe is our relations with each other. The universe is made of one kind of entity: each one is alive, each determines the course of his own existence.”

He doesn’t think that there are words to describe such experiences. We sometimes feel so too faced with certain situations. But the ingenious have found a way to outwit this incapacity of our mind. They say that they were ‘struck speechless’ by certain things.

The thwack might be mighty too.

Thaddeus may not have been dumb struck, he is simply sorry that the limited can’t express the unlimited.

No wonder al all, he is talking about something which “can’t be reached by words and mind” (Na thathra vagachchathi, no mano)

To tell you the truth this lazybones (meaning yours truly) have had many such experiences in meditation (Not under medication as you suppose. There is a group of Yogis in India who resort to “ Bhang” (Strong beverage made out of opium) for illumination. Interestingly even this practice has not been looked down upon by the highly elastic Indian mind)

May be some of you might not like the way he goes on about expansion and contraction and ‘becoming’ space. He is right more or less. You need to experience it to know it.

I am not recommending him here, but I am suggesting that you read him.
It is nice to read the lazy once in a while.