David Quinn wrote:Dan Rowden wrote:David Quinn wrote:In my view, it is better to treat women as human beings and presume they are capable of reasoning and achieving understanding and allow them to rise to the occasion if they are good enough. It's a far more honest, respectful approach.
Yes, but how exactly will this work in a practical way, Dave? How does a teacher of truth not effectively beat everyone up? How does such a one avoid sexuality with a sexual being?
The key thing is stop being sexual oneself. That is, ceasing the mad urge to look outwards and use others for completion, to crave their approval, to want to hypnotize and dominate them. In other words, by learning how to be self-contained.
Agreed, but with the qualification that one cannot really control or determine how one will be taken by others, especially women; one can only eliminate oneself as a causal agent. Though, again, it isn't necessarily possible even then as a woman may see sexuality in the very fact of your speaking to her.
In this way you can minimize the danger of pushing their sexual buttons. You can become invisible to the eye of a woman (as in the manner of a hobo or a garbage collector).
Yes, I agree one can minimise the danger. One way to do that is to not continue to indulge a person who is not "getting" it. So far it seems to me that McKenna lacks the insight into the feminine sufficient for him to recognise when the conceptual content of his words don't matter anymore and the mere fact of his speaking does. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a young barmaid at the local pub a while back. She was studying journalism and something else - can't recall now - at Uni and she mentioned philosophy and wanting to study that, and what I do came up in the conversation. She immediately got all wide-eyed and when she knocked off work she came and sat with me and we discussed studying philosophy and the crappy nature of universities and so forth. She looked near orgasmic by the end of the conversation. After that I've not brought the subject up with her even in passing (nor she with me, which is more telling) because I could tell from watching her behaviour and interaction with others that it wasn't really important to her. She just wanted to indulge that part of her personality. To bring it up again would be to do no more than indulge her.
I get the feeling McKenna likes to indulge, but justifies it with the nonsense that if you keep pressing, progress might be made. It's almost as if the characters in his books are an attempt to redress what may have been his failures with women in terms of getting them to think. I'm still not totally sure what I think on this, but something is wrong.
I agree it can be tricky at times because men of truth possess a natural authority and women are instinctively attracted to men of authority. But if one can at least minimize the sexual spill-over from this dynamic, then female seekers, if they have any potential at all, will have a better chance of going beyond the trap of falling in love with you. They won't be smothered out of their potential at the very start of their path, when they are at their most vulnerable.
I agree with all that, but I don't think you can really control it; all you can do is eliminate your role and be able to see the danger signs. I'm getting the distinct impression that McKenna doesn't know what those signs are, or, perhaps, doesn't care.
Dan, your trick of replacing Sarah with Shaun in McKenna's passage was interesting, because it highlighted even more the essential sickness of his mind. For example:
"Unity consciousness is great," I say, and he looks relieved.
Remember, this is a fictitious story that he is writing. So here we have a man who essentially spends his time
daydreaming about his hypnotic powers and the impact they have on other people. In the case of Sarah, it comes across as a sexual fantasy. With Shaun, it looks like an expression of low self-esteem. (Same thing, at bottom)
Indeed. This is an important theme in McKenna's writings. He does seem to be playing games with people all the time, and reveling in the game. But, as you say, that indicates something far other than what ought be expected from an enlightened, or even highly developed person. Indeed, I've yet to read a passage where his interactions don't come off as a game of some kind, or where he places emphasis on dynamics that don't seem to add to the point. It's as if he's trying to convince the reader of his prowess by way of his ability to mesmerise his interlocutors. He could just let the dialogues stand for what they are and allow the reader to interpret them, but instead he gives them this added touch of, "watch me mess with this person's head."
When I showed your revised passage to Sue, her first impression was that he was displaying the mind of a pedophile.
That's actually what I thought as I was constructing it. There was a sense of domination in it. Indeed, there's a sense of domination in all his interactions. Could just be his writing style, though. But, for him not to sense that, if that were the case, says something about his depth of appreciation for psychology.
I can understand what she means. The subtext of his writings is that he enjoys preying on the minds of people much younger than himself.
Well, to be fair, it could also just mean he sees more potential in young people, which is perfectly sound. But he does come across as a sort of high IQ type that always wants to dominate people with their intellect, which in his case would be his.......not sure what to type here....
Another passage:
"Mystical union, being at one with the universe, the direct experience of the infinite. Bliss, ecstasy--a taste of heaven. Beyond time, beyond space, beyond the ability of any words to describe. The peace that surpasseth all understanding."
"Wow," he says, aptly. His name is Shaun. He's young, early twenties, and I've just pushed all of his spirituality buttons. If I were a guru, that would be my full time job. I shudder at the thought.
This is laughable. McKenna spends his days daydreaming about his impact on others as a spiritual guru and even writes fictitiously about the profound effect he has on others, and then he has the presumption to shudder at the thought of being a guru.
Who is he trying to kid?
Yes, he comes across poorly in that moment. I guess he would say he pushes their buttons for purer reasons; that he does so to help them break free of their delusional chains. But really, there are ways other than pushing buttons and setting people up for a fall to achieve that. They have to jump rather than be pushed. Frankly, a genuinely intelligent person would see his method and tell him to fuck off.
He also writes:
How my words are received or what becomes of them after they leave my lips is beyond my ability to control. I speak, that's all. The words flow like song and soothe me. That's my thing. Nodding and maintaining a facial expression that conveys interest and receptiveness is his thing. I'm into the speaking--into my words and how well they represent the underlying ideas. It would be nice to believe that my words were clicking in his mind like the beads of an abacus, but I know they're not and I'm comfortable with that.
It sounds like he is trying to hypnotize himself here.
I don't have any real issue with that passage other than the fact that he states that he knows his words aren't getting through, yet he continues with his game. If that doesn't indicate an attachment to the game, I don't know what does.
I fall silent as layers of meaning wash through me one after another and my appreciation causes a swelling in my chest. "Wonderful," I think. "Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful."
Who in their right mind would write such rubbish?
It's no wonder he likes young women. He is one! Oh, and in the midst of this, I found:
Spiritual-Enlightenment-The-Damndest-Thing
I can't bring myself to go on. There is too much sickness in McKenna's writing to deal with.
Dan, you wrote:
How should that have exchange been different to avoid a sexual dynamic?
Well, he needs to stop fantasizing and daydreaming for a start. The sexual dynamic is powered by such indulgences. He needs to stop worrying about how he is being perceived by others and how he is impacting on them. Above all, he needs to resolve his self-esteem issues.
That's the funny thing. He claims he doesn't care, yet he goes to great lengths to describe how he is being seen and how he is impacting and being impacted upon. Once you are aware of this in his writing, it becomes more and more significant, and distracting.
I'm finding his works full of incongruities, full of emotions and subtle emotionalisms. Unfortunately the style of writing he's chosen to frame his ideas in tends to lead to this as a matter of course. It means there's far too much for people to like in his books and far too little to dislike and be challenged by.
