The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment
Encyclopedia
The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment, is a philosophical essay by Paterson
, New Jersey
-born American author Thaddeus Golas
(1924-1997.)
Originally started as a letter for friends, the book began as a mimeographed pamphlet which Golas handed out on the streets of San Francisco in 1971. It was officially published in 1971 by the son of an East Coast businessman, Joe E. Casey, but was quickly taken over by Palo Alto’s Seed Center in 1972, after a dispute between Golas and Casey.
The book sold briskly through many printings and was translated into many languages. It received notoriety as a legitimate work of metaphysics
. In 1979, it wound up at Bantam Books
, where it blossomed and eventually reached the end of its run in 1993. In 1995, Gibbs-Smith Publishing of Utah
, a publisher known mostly for interior decorating books, issued a limited hardcover edition of The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment. This edition included some photographs and an added introduction by Golas which served as a compendium of the author's later thoughts and reflections about "The Guide."
is an original conception, unlike any other in the area of Spirituality
and Philosophy
, and has often been described as "the last book you'll ever need to read on Spirituality
."
It contains many constructive warnings to readers about typical pitfalls associated with Spiritual Questing, and offers simple remedies for many forms of confusion often found in the field.
It immediately was heralded as major philosophical work by Richard (Ram Dass
) Alpert, and Alan Watts
, who read passages from the pamphlet edition out-loud to their flocks.
Though the Guide inspired many to write spiritual books, it was a unique phenomenon for its time, and remains today. Golas purposely avoided discussing themes which had been covered by other spiritual authors, and focused instead on exposing his own ideas. Thaddeus Golas said he initially wrote The Lazy Man' s Guide to Enlightenment as a sort of a life-raft for hippies who were drowning in the rough seas of the psychedelic era, but was soon stunned to discover that "the general public got off on it".
originally used by the author for the text was Baskerville
. Thaddeus Golas, who worked extensively in publishing as a typesetter, proofreader, and production editor, felt strongly about clean and classic serif font, since "pretty" typefaces would loose their delicate serifs when printed on cheap paper. In 1975, DeRay Norton, his publisher at the Seed Center in Palo Alto, opted to have the typeface reset without telling Golas, after Norton was convinced by a printer to spend more money on a new font
. To his chagrin, Golas watched the subsequent editions of the Guide at Bantam Books
, printed on cheap paper, and shot from the plates from the "Seed Center" edition. This proved his fears to be founded. The Bantam edition lacked the durability and the impact of the previous release.
Golas had even less control of the 1995 Gibbs Smith release. While being a small hardback edition, it lacked the dimensions of a pocketbook that could be carried in a backpack or hip pocket and referenced to easily, in a 'cosmic' pinch.
Foreign translations of The Guide were also problematic. Golas's concise style of writing and high-minded concepts sometimes did not lend well to clear translation into certain languages.
The Cover art of the Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment, a curvilinear design composed of circles, is an original creation by architect Klaus Rothe, commissioned in the style of a classic Russian folk mandala
.
The intersecting and overlapping circles evoke the permeability of space
, energy
and matter
.
The font
chosen by Golas on the cover of his book is a now defunct variant of a Caslon
Old Face whose closest relative is presently Caslon Antique
, or Casablanca
Antique. Similar mandalas adorn the covers of Golas's posthumous publications;
Love and Pain a Map of Consciousness, and The Cosmic Airdrome
, Copyright 2008, Even Lazier Publishing.
In 2010 a Seed Center release of the Guide with some revisions subtitled; "A Young Person's Guide and Edition, The collected works of Thaddeus Golas Volume I". It contains three extra chapters that were written by the author in later years.
, Golas asks “If you can’t find it where you’re standing, where do you hope to run in search of it”?
In fact, Thaddeus Golas, in The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment, explains how in his view, even the effort of seeing the world as “needing to be purified” or people “as needing to be enlightened,” can easily lead one to erect a wall that can prevent a genuine gain from occurring in the opening perceptions that lead to a state of Enlightenment, or help maintaining it.
goes on to say that it is “pointless to worry about better or worse spiritual conditions beyond our own,” since “keeping our attention focused on the low vibrations of others fastens us to our own level.”
Thaddeus Golas felt his most important chapter within the book was entitled "Self-Improvement."
The segment discusses the survival of all structures, including the self
, in relation to Spiritual questing.
“A structure
,” Golas says, “is any relation between entities that avoids dissolving.” He goes on to point out that “the self that we know is a structure...”
“An odd thing about structures is that they will dissolve both from success and failure, too much pleasure or too much pain, so the problem, if you want a structure, is to maintain a tension somewhere between the two.”
Golas explains that the nature of all structures in our universe
requires positive/negative or push/pull tension in order to avoid dissolution.
He argues that in terms of spiritual questing, “the Ego feels better when it has to contend with the tension of threats to its survival.” Hence the warning about seeking Spiritual Enlightenment through conventional methods:
“Negative emphasis results in an intensified structure and a stronger ego. Even though some of these activities, like self-denial
, are carried on under the banner of spiritual search, the result is the same. On a subtle level we know that most spiritual endeavors will not succeed, but we go on maintaining the fantasy that they are admirable. Many of us have no intention of really succeeding in dissolving our attachment to structure and going to another plane of existence.”
This paradox and its remedies are central to The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment.
Conversely in this same chapter, Golas specifically points the way toward dissolving the unwanted structures that have become
useless and redundant habits that secure us to our present consciousness. One must accept the present situation fully before being able to move beyond. "Love it the way it is." Golas contends that true love is probably the easiest, clearest (and laziest) path to higher consciousness. Meditation
, psychedelics, yoga
, asceticism
, all have their place, but they can just effectively become "good games" over time.
Throughout the Guide, Thaddeus Golas continues to define the concept of love as a tool for self elevation. "Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it." Love is a willing acceptance to be in the same space with others and situations. "Love as much as you can from wherever you are", "If you are not sure how to love, love yourself for not knowing." While true love can allow an individual to raise consciousness at will, one also has to have the will or intention to get there. The author points out that many who take long arduous spiritual paths may have no serious intention of achieving enlightenment. A commitment to
the process can be as simple as an affirmation, a word or short phrase that is easily remembered. Golas gives many simple phrases throughout the guide and lists his favorites at the end.
Love and Pain =
and Pain is the second book by Thaddeus Golas.
Wanting to make additions to The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment, and reexamine some of the issues presented with further clarity. Golas, in his later years, explored the idea that " too much pleasure or too much pain" would cause all structures to vanish.
He wrote extensively on the nature of consciousness from the idea expressed in this maxim. He saw all interactions as oscillating between Pleasure and Pain in a search of the "Pleasure of Agreement."
He concluded that "perfect functional agreement" is impossible in our energy dimension, because "energy never rests, and never stops changing" thus, "our World was a constant rearrangement of the same variables..."
"Good manners may be our best hope," he said, "but we cannot fix the chaos."
This thinking aligned him with several mystical traditions, including the Buddhist concept of dukkha
which views the world as an endlessly delusional dream from which the soul would do well to escape, but placed him at odds with the New Age
movement, which typically sees the world as a sort of Divine Playground whose apotheosis
promises to deliver happiness and bliss.
Such resistance from the New Age
industry kept his writing from being published.
and Pain, which explores these ideas, is published posthumously
by Seed Center Books of California.
" vision of Spirituality, the author brings the reader to the principal tenets of essential navigation through awakening to the transcendent
nature within man. He navigates around common mistakes associated with many schools of spiritual dogma. At the core of The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment lies an idea discovered by Golas in 1950: "Space is to Energy as Energy is to Mass."
This idea was inspired by reading a popular adaptation of Einstein’s General Relativity
concepts. Thaddeus Golas
begins The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment with a proposition:
He goes on to suggest that "the function of each being is to expand and to contract."
Thaddeus Golas equated Space
with Consciousness
:"Basic entities are conscious space when expanded,
unconscious mass when contracted, and alternating between these states as energy," he noted.
He described: "There are two states of being: expanded and contracted. (It might be more precise to say standing momentum outward, and standing momentum inward, but those are awkward phrases to repeat often.) An entity must be in one state or the other at any given instant.
It may sustain either state at will. Expanding consciousness is not a process of expanding like a balloon, it is a process of PROLONGING your conscious state.
You must be either conscious or unconscious in any given instant".
, according to Golas.
"Energy is the rapid alternation between space and mass", Golas explained, "the devil, the delinquent,
the messenger who delivers only half the message, the marker of time."
He coined the notion that: “Space
propels energy
, and energy compels matter
– the propulsion is uniform; it is what we now call the force of gravity”.
The book essentially discusses our lives from that viewpoint.
during the late sixties and early seventies.
He continued to write enthusiastically about its properties, long after he ceased taking the drug itself in 1971.
He credited LSD
for helping him crystallize his ideas on the physics
of metaphysics
, but disliked the notion which many proposed, that The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment was in some way channeled, or resulted from automatic writing
spell in an altered state of consciousness
.
Of that, he said: "I resented being seen as some sort of typist for higher consciousness."
Golas enjoyed discussing his tangible and down-to-earth reasons for bringing forth his book as he did, and spoke of having his first satori
experience almost a decade before he ever used psychedelics; he often said his ideas evolved over a 30 year period. He was proud of his intrinsic qualities as a writer, and appreciated being recognized for his earthbound human skills, and his clarity of thinking.
He often said that throughout his life, he was denied simple credit for his ideas, on many occasions...
, Astrology
, Witchcraft
, Shamanism
, Clairvoyance
, Manifestation
do have phenomenological relevance, he contends that these practices place far too much emphasis on manipulating energy for some extension into the physical realm. Throughout Golas's writings, he asserts that one's goal should be to leave this reality, to get off the wheel of life rather than trying to gain some power over it. According to Golas, energy manipulation, whether physical or spiritual, will always prove to be unreliable in the end.
Such revisions were intended to help the text survive the extinction of the 1960s jargon. He also clarified many concepts and emphasized the idea that consciousness
, expansion
, more so than love
, is the key to Enlightenment
. A new version of the book, containing three new chapters and small 'fixes' has been released Internationally in 2011.
Paterson
-In the USA:* Paterson, former name of Cherokee, Nevada County, California*Paterson, New Jersey, USA*Paterson, Washington, USA-In Australia:*Paterson, New South Wales, Australia*Paterson River, New South Wales, Australia...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
-born American author Thaddeus Golas
Thaddeus Golas
Thaddeus Golas is generally known for having written The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment, which has become known as a classic book on human consciousness and spirituality. The book was first published in 1972 by J.E. Casey of San Francisco...
(1924-1997.)
Originally started as a letter for friends, the book began as a mimeographed pamphlet which Golas handed out on the streets of San Francisco in 1971. It was officially published in 1971 by the son of an East Coast businessman, Joe E. Casey, but was quickly taken over by Palo Alto’s Seed Center in 1972, after a dispute between Golas and Casey.
The book sold briskly through many printings and was translated into many languages. It received notoriety as a legitimate work of metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
. In 1979, it wound up at Bantam Books
Bantam Books
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...
, where it blossomed and eventually reached the end of its run in 1993. In 1995, Gibbs-Smith Publishing of Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
, a publisher known mostly for interior decorating books, issued a limited hardcover edition of The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment. This edition included some photographs and an added introduction by Golas which served as a compendium of the author's later thoughts and reflections about "The Guide."
The Book
The 80 page bookBook
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
is an original conception, unlike any other in the area of Spirituality
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
and Philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, and has often been described as "the last book you'll ever need to read on Spirituality
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
."
It contains many constructive warnings to readers about typical pitfalls associated with Spiritual Questing, and offers simple remedies for many forms of confusion often found in the field.
It immediately was heralded as major philosophical work by Richard (Ram Dass
Ram Dass
Ram Dass is an American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the seminal 1971 book Be Here Now. He is known for his personal and professional associations with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s, for his travels to India and his relationship with the Hindu guru Neem...
) Alpert, and Alan Watts
Alan Watts
Alan Wilson Watts was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York...
, who read passages from the pamphlet edition out-loud to their flocks.
Though the Guide inspired many to write spiritual books, it was a unique phenomenon for its time, and remains today. Golas purposely avoided discussing themes which had been covered by other spiritual authors, and focused instead on exposing his own ideas. Thaddeus Golas said he initially wrote The Lazy Man' s Guide to Enlightenment as a sort of a life-raft for hippies who were drowning in the rough seas of the psychedelic era, but was soon stunned to discover that "the general public got off on it".
Font, Typography, and Cover Art
The fontFont
In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...
originally used by the author for the text was Baskerville
Baskerville
Baskerville is a transitional serif typeface designed in 1757 by John Baskerville in Birmingham, England. Baskerville is classified as a transitional typeface, positioned between the old style typefaces of William Caslon, and the modern styles of Giambattista Bodoni and Firmin Didot.The...
. Thaddeus Golas, who worked extensively in publishing as a typesetter, proofreader, and production editor, felt strongly about clean and classic serif font, since "pretty" typefaces would loose their delicate serifs when printed on cheap paper. In 1975, DeRay Norton, his publisher at the Seed Center in Palo Alto, opted to have the typeface reset without telling Golas, after Norton was convinced by a printer to spend more money on a new font
Font
In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...
. To his chagrin, Golas watched the subsequent editions of the Guide at Bantam Books
Bantam Books
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...
, printed on cheap paper, and shot from the plates from the "Seed Center" edition. This proved his fears to be founded. The Bantam edition lacked the durability and the impact of the previous release.
Golas had even less control of the 1995 Gibbs Smith release. While being a small hardback edition, it lacked the dimensions of a pocketbook that could be carried in a backpack or hip pocket and referenced to easily, in a 'cosmic' pinch.
Foreign translations of The Guide were also problematic. Golas's concise style of writing and high-minded concepts sometimes did not lend well to clear translation into certain languages.
The Cover art of the Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment, a curvilinear design composed of circles, is an original creation by architect Klaus Rothe, commissioned in the style of a classic Russian folk mandala
Mandala
Maṇḍala is a Sanskrit word that means "circle". In the Buddhist and Hindu religious traditions their sacred art often takes a mandala form. The basic form of most Hindu and Buddhist mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point...
.
The intersecting and overlapping circles evoke the permeability of space
Space
Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...
, energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
and matter
Matter
Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume...
.
The font
Font
In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...
chosen by Golas on the cover of his book is a now defunct variant of a Caslon
Caslon
Caslon refers to a number of serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I , and various revivals thereof.Caslon shares the irregularity characteristic of Dutch Baroque types. It is characterized by short ascenders and descenders, bracketed serifs, moderately-high contrast, robust texture, and...
Old Face whose closest relative is presently Caslon Antique
Caslon Antique
Caslon Antique is a decorative American typeface that was designed in 1894 by Berne Nadall. It was originally called "Fifteenth Century", but was renamed "Caslon Antique" by Nadall's foundry, Barnhart Bros. & Spindler, in the mid-1920s....
, or Casablanca
Casablanca
Casablanca is a city in western Morocco, located on the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Grand Casablanca region.Casablanca is Morocco's largest city as well as its chief port. It is also the biggest city in the Maghreb. The 2004 census recorded a population of 2,949,805 in the prefecture...
Antique. Similar mandalas adorn the covers of Golas's posthumous publications;
Love and Pain a Map of Consciousness, and The Cosmic Airdrome
The Cosmic Airdrome
, is a book of aphorisms and poems by Patterson New Jersey born American author Thaddeus Golas who is widely known for having written The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment....
, Copyright 2008, Even Lazier Publishing.
In 2010 a Seed Center release of the Guide with some revisions subtitled; "A Young Person's Guide and Edition, The collected works of Thaddeus Golas Volume I". It contains three extra chapters that were written by the author in later years.
Title and Meaning
The title of the book refers to the fact that the author, a self-described “lazy man,” refuted the notion that a spiritual quest should demand “effort, non-smoking, strict diet, hard work, or other evidences of virtue.” Quoting ZenZen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...
, Golas asks “If you can’t find it where you’re standing, where do you hope to run in search of it”?
In fact, Thaddeus Golas, in The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment, explains how in his view, even the effort of seeing the world as “needing to be purified” or people “as needing to be enlightened,” can easily lead one to erect a wall that can prevent a genuine gain from occurring in the opening perceptions that lead to a state of Enlightenment, or help maintaining it.
Concepts and Cautionary advice
Thaddeus Golas, in The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment, also cautions against buying into the Spiritual Status system so typical of philosophical ideologues: “This can produce unloving snobbery towards your brothers,” he says, and reminds the reader that “what we see and describe is always ourselves.” He adds “Many of our feelings about the world are based on erroneous perceptions about the status of others.” Thaddeus GolasThaddeus Golas
Thaddeus Golas is generally known for having written The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment, which has become known as a classic book on human consciousness and spirituality. The book was first published in 1972 by J.E. Casey of San Francisco...
goes on to say that it is “pointless to worry about better or worse spiritual conditions beyond our own,” since “keeping our attention focused on the low vibrations of others fastens us to our own level.”
Survival of Structures and push-pull tensions
Another concept central to The Lazy man’s Guide To Enlightenment is the study of structures.Thaddeus Golas felt his most important chapter within the book was entitled "Self-Improvement."
The segment discusses the survival of all structures, including the self
Self (spirituality)
Religious views on the self vary widely. The self is a complex and core subject in many forms of spirituality. Two types of self are commonly considered - the self that is the ego, also called the learned, superficial self of mind and body, "false self", an egoic creation, and the Self which is...
, in relation to Spiritual questing.
“A structure
Structure
Structure is a fundamental, tangible or intangible notion referring to the recognition, observation, nature, and permanence of patterns and relationships of entities. This notion may itself be an object, such as a built structure, or an attribute, such as the structure of society...
,” Golas says, “is any relation between entities that avoids dissolving.” He goes on to point out that “the self that we know is a structure...”
“An odd thing about structures is that they will dissolve both from success and failure, too much pleasure or too much pain, so the problem, if you want a structure, is to maintain a tension somewhere between the two.”
Golas explains that the nature of all structures in our universe
Universe
The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...
requires positive/negative or push/pull tension in order to avoid dissolution.
He argues that in terms of spiritual questing, “the Ego feels better when it has to contend with the tension of threats to its survival.” Hence the warning about seeking Spiritual Enlightenment through conventional methods:
“Negative emphasis results in an intensified structure and a stronger ego. Even though some of these activities, like self-denial
Self-denial
Self-denial is altruistic abstinence - the willingness to forego personal pleasures or undergo personal trials in the pursuit of the increased good of another. Various religions and cultures take differing views of self-denial, some considering it a positive trait and others considering it a...
, are carried on under the banner of spiritual search, the result is the same. On a subtle level we know that most spiritual endeavors will not succeed, but we go on maintaining the fantasy that they are admirable. Many of us have no intention of really succeeding in dissolving our attachment to structure and going to another plane of existence.”
This paradox and its remedies are central to The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment.
Conversely in this same chapter, Golas specifically points the way toward dissolving the unwanted structures that have become
useless and redundant habits that secure us to our present consciousness. One must accept the present situation fully before being able to move beyond. "Love it the way it is." Golas contends that true love is probably the easiest, clearest (and laziest) path to higher consciousness. Meditation
Meditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
, psychedelics, yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
, asceticism
Asceticism
Asceticism describes a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from various sorts of worldly pleasures often with the aim of pursuing religious and spiritual goals...
, all have their place, but they can just effectively become "good games" over time.
Throughout the Guide, Thaddeus Golas continues to define the concept of love as a tool for self elevation. "Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it." Love is a willing acceptance to be in the same space with others and situations. "Love as much as you can from wherever you are", "If you are not sure how to love, love yourself for not knowing." While true love can allow an individual to raise consciousness at will, one also has to have the will or intention to get there. The author points out that many who take long arduous spiritual paths may have no serious intention of achieving enlightenment. A commitment to
the process can be as simple as an affirmation, a word or short phrase that is easily remembered. Golas gives many simple phrases throughout the guide and lists his favorites at the end.
Love and Pain =
and Pain is the second book by Thaddeus Golas.
Wanting to make additions to The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment, and reexamine some of the issues presented with further clarity. Golas, in his later years, explored the idea that " too much pleasure or too much pain" would cause all structures to vanish.
He wrote extensively on the nature of consciousness from the idea expressed in this maxim. He saw all interactions as oscillating between Pleasure and Pain in a search of the "Pleasure of Agreement."
He concluded that "perfect functional agreement" is impossible in our energy dimension, because "energy never rests, and never stops changing" thus, "our World was a constant rearrangement of the same variables..."
"Good manners may be our best hope," he said, "but we cannot fix the chaos."
This thinking aligned him with several mystical traditions, including the Buddhist concept of dukkha
Dukkha
Dukkha is a Pali term roughly corresponding to a number of terms in English including suffering, pain, discontent, unsatisfactoriness, unhappiness, sorrow, affliction, social alienation, anxiety,...
which views the world as an endlessly delusional dream from which the soul would do well to escape, but placed him at odds with the New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
movement, which typically sees the world as a sort of Divine Playground whose apotheosis
Apotheosis
Apotheosis is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre.In theology, the term apotheosis refers to the idea that an individual has been raised to godlike stature...
promises to deliver happiness and bliss.
Such resistance from the New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
industry kept his writing from being published.
and Pain, which explores these ideas, is published posthumously
by Seed Center Books of California.
Space, Energy and Mass
In his "looking-glassMirror
A mirror is an object that reflects light or sound in a way that preserves much of its original quality prior to its contact with the mirror. Some mirrors also filter out some wavelengths, while preserving other wavelengths in the reflection...
" vision of Spirituality, the author brings the reader to the principal tenets of essential navigation through awakening to the transcendent
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...
nature within man. He navigates around common mistakes associated with many schools of spiritual dogma. At the core of The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment lies an idea discovered by Golas in 1950: "Space is to Energy as Energy is to Mass."
This idea was inspired by reading a popular adaptation of Einstein’s General Relativity
General relativity
General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics...
concepts. Thaddeus Golas
Thaddeus Golas
Thaddeus Golas is generally known for having written The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment, which has become known as a classic book on human consciousness and spirituality. The book was first published in 1972 by J.E. Casey of San Francisco...
begins The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment with a proposition:
- We are equal beings and the Universe is our relations with each other.
- Each being is alive.
- Each being determines the course of its own existence.
He goes on to suggest that "the function of each being is to expand and to contract."
Thaddeus Golas equated Space
Space
Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...
with Consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
:"Basic entities are conscious space when expanded,
unconscious mass when contracted, and alternating between these states as energy," he noted.
He described: "There are two states of being: expanded and contracted. (It might be more precise to say standing momentum outward, and standing momentum inward, but those are awkward phrases to repeat often.) An entity must be in one state or the other at any given instant.
It may sustain either state at will. Expanding consciousness is not a process of expanding like a balloon, it is a process of PROLONGING your conscious state.
You must be either conscious or unconscious in any given instant".
Energy and Spirit
The role of Energy is central to Thaddeus Golas' philosophy. In his later revisions of The Lazy man' s Guide to Enlightenment and in much of his subsequent writing, Thaddeus Golas emphasized the importance of understanding the role played by the "seduction" of Energy in our interactions on the material plane...The very "glue" which holds matter together is also seen as the chief culprit in the delusion experienced by consciousness when it is bound in SpacetimeSpacetime
In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space as being three-dimensional and time playing the role of a fourth dimension that is of a different sort from the spatial dimensions...
, according to Golas.
"Energy is the rapid alternation between space and mass", Golas explained, "the devil, the delinquent,
the messenger who delivers only half the message, the marker of time."
He coined the notion that: “Space
Space
Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...
propels energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
, and energy compels matter
Matter
Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume...
– the propulsion is uniform; it is what we now call the force of gravity”.
The book essentially discusses our lives from that viewpoint.
Crediting Lysergic Acid Diethylamide
Thaddeus Golas used LSDLSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
during the late sixties and early seventies.
He continued to write enthusiastically about its properties, long after he ceased taking the drug itself in 1971.
He credited LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
for helping him crystallize his ideas on the physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
of metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
, but disliked the notion which many proposed, that The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment was in some way channeled, or resulted from automatic writing
Automatic writing
Automatic writing or psychography is writing which the writer states to be produced from a subconscious and/or spiritual source without conscious awareness of the content.-History:...
spell in an altered state of consciousness
Altered state of consciousness
An altered state of consciousness , also named altered state of mind, is any condition which is significantly different from a normal waking beta wave state. The expression was used as early as 1966 by Arnold M. Ludwig and brought into common usage from 1969 by Charles Tart: it describes induced...
.
Of that, he said: "I resented being seen as some sort of typist for higher consciousness."
Golas enjoyed discussing his tangible and down-to-earth reasons for bringing forth his book as he did, and spoke of having his first satori
Satori
is a Japanese Buddhist term for enlightenment that literally means "understanding". In the Zen Buddhist tradition, satori refers to a flash of sudden awareness, or individual enlightenment, and is considered a "first step" or embarkation toward nirvana....
experience almost a decade before he ever used psychedelics; he often said his ideas evolved over a 30 year period. He was proud of his intrinsic qualities as a writer, and appreciated being recognized for his earthbound human skills, and his clarity of thinking.
He often said that throughout his life, he was denied simple credit for his ideas, on many occasions...
The New Age Movement
Golas over time observed many phenomena that came out of the sixties and eschewed much of it. While MysticismMysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
, Astrology
Astrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
, Witchcraft
Witchcraft
Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...
, Shamanism
Shamanism
Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. To quote Eliade: "A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = technique of ecstasy." Shamanism encompasses the...
, Clairvoyance
Clairvoyance
The term clairvoyance is used to refer to the ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through means other than the known human senses, a form of extra-sensory perception...
, Manifestation
Manifestation
Manifestation may refer to any one of the following:* Manifestation of God, the prophets of the Bahá'í Faith* Avatar, manifestation of God in Hinduism...
do have phenomenological relevance, he contends that these practices place far too much emphasis on manipulating energy for some extension into the physical realm. Throughout Golas's writings, he asserts that one's goal should be to leave this reality, to get off the wheel of life rather than trying to gain some power over it. According to Golas, energy manipulation, whether physical or spiritual, will always prove to be unreliable in the end.
Updates and revisions
Thaddeus Golas made revisions to the original text of the Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment throughout the 1980s and 1990s.Such revisions were intended to help the text survive the extinction of the 1960s jargon. He also clarified many concepts and emphasized the idea that consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
, expansion
Expansion
- Mathematics :*Expansion *Polynomial expansion*Taylor expansion*expansion of a graph*The converse of a reduct, in model theory or universal algebra- Other uses :*Expansion card, in computer hardware*Expansion pack, in gaming...
, more so than love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
, is the key to Enlightenment
Enlightenment (spiritual)
Enlightenment in a secular context often means the "full comprehension of a situation", but in spiritual terms the word alludes to a spiritual revelation or deep insight into the meaning and purpose of all things, communication with or understanding of the mind of God, profound spiritual...
. A new version of the book, containing three new chapters and small 'fixes' has been released Internationally in 2011.
External links
- The SEED CENTER: publisher of Thaddeus Golas
- Even Lazier Publishing: preserving the writings and essays by Thaddeus Golas
- The Audio CD Edition of The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment, read by Thaddeus Golas, complete with a new handbook written by the author
- Thaddeus Golas' later texts, and forthcoming posthumous writings
- The Official website about author Thaddeus Golas, his biography, and beliefs
- The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment - A copyrighted transcript of the pamphlet edition, for review purposes