The Waking

    (As with my previous blog from 11th November 2024, this first appeared as a book review that I contributed at goodreads.com on 19th November. I didn’t think the previous book by Jed McKenna was helpful and only gave it 2/5, whereas this one is helpful and I gave it 5/5.) ‘Subtraction: The Simple Math of Enlightenment’ is a very good (despite missing the ‘s’ from ‘Math’ 😊 ), very useful book on one man’s journey to enlightenment, which includes advice to all who have an interest in this journey. The title refers to the subtraction of that which is not true, as the path to the discovery of that which is true. It’s a popular way of describing this journey, although Nevins himself, like his main teacher Richard Rose, is not that well known yet. I found much to like in this book. I paused in many places to reflect on something I just read – a good sign. Even better, I sometimes felt compelled to write notes to myself to consider later! Early in the book, Nevins writes: Years l...

   (This blog first appeared as a book review that I contributed at goodreads.com on 10th November, 2024. There is a small amount of overlap between some of my comments there and previous blogs here. Hopefully the repetition is useful! I also ‘tidied up’ the text of the GoodReads review a bit.)   As far as I know, ‘Jed McKenna’ is a pseudonym and people in a position to know say that the spiritual centre and cast of characters described in this book are all made up. However, the ideas given in the book are worth commenting on anyway, whoever the author is. Rather than keep referring to the author as ‘the pseudonymous Jed McKenna’ I’ll refer to him / them as JM.  For those wondering about buying the book, I’ll mention a few of the points JM made in the book and add a few observations of my own. As the title suggests, the book is about spiritual enlightenment, which JM defines as “abiding, non-dual awareness.” JM also describes a simple technique for realising enligh...

  One of the useful things I got from spending several decades working in the social sciences was seeing the importance of holding onto theories very lightly and being prepared to let go of one theory in favour of a better one when the data supported it. Although this is a drastic simplification, the process went something like this:     • You study some aspect of the world that you want to understand better.     • If there is currently no adequate theory that helps in understanding that aspect of the world then you develop one.     • From that theory you derive one or more measurable, testable hypotheses.     • You do an experiment to gather data that indicates whether your hypothesis is correct and therefore whether your theory needs changing or can stay as it is, for now… So far this is a brief description of a fairly standard way of doing science, known as the hypothetico-deductive method as described by Karl Popper among others. However,...