Well, finally

Kenny Wilber has given an interview to Salon! After all these years! Woo hoo!

So now you can all go over and find a nice, concise explanation of what Pretty Lady has been talking about, all this time.

You asked, "Do you believe in God?" In exoteric religion, it's a matter of belief. Do you believe in the kind of God who rewards and punishes and will sit with you in some eternal heaven? But in the esoteric form of religion, God is a direct experience. Most contemplatives would call it "godhead." It's so different from the mythic conceptions of God -- the old man in the sky with a gray beard. The word "God" is much more misleading than it is accurate. So there's a whole series of terms that are used instead by the esoteric traditions -- super consciousness, Big Mind, Big Self. This ultimate reality is a direct union that is felt or recognized in a state of enlightenment or liberation.

You see? Very simple.

Now, however, Pretty Lady must take Kenny to task for some basic irrationality.

What do you think of the New Age writers who see a link between mysticism and the weirdness of quantum physics? There have been popular books, like "The Tao of Physics" and "The Dancing Wu Li Masters," as well as the hit film "What the Bleep Do We Know." They point out that reality at the quantum level is inherently probabilistic. And they say that the act of observing a quantum phenomenon plays a critical role in actually creating that phenomenon. The lesson they draw is that consciousness itself can shape physical reality.

They are confused. Even people like Deepak Chopra say this. These are good people; I know them. But when they say consciousness can act to create matter, whose consciousness? Yours or mine? They never get to that. It's a very narcissistic view.

What do you mean, whose consciousness? The Big One! The one you were just talking about! The 'godhead' one! The one that 'creates reality', in all those mythic traditions! Duh. Since our consciousness is, at essence, one with the Big Mind, it is fair to say that we assist in creating this physical world. This is only because of What We Are, however, not anything we do. Usually when we apply our ego-minds to directing the creation of reality, we are more likely to get in the way, and mess things up for everyone.

So Pretty Lady must take these same New Age narcissists to task, anyhow, because they very often do confuse small ego-consciousness with the Big Mind, as Ken points out. They commit horrible acts of abuse with this presumption, forgetting that compassion is the very force that links the ego-mind with the Big Mind, and thus any viewpoint which lacks compassion is, by definition, unGodly.

Furthermore, when a small ego-mind transcends itself to directly perceive unity with God, the concerns of that small ego-mind aren't so very prepossessing anymore. Thus the trivial matter of whether the illness goes away or not, whether Great Wealth manifests or not, becomes completely irrelevant. Thus a person who fails to manifest a Complete Recovery, or a mansion in the hills, is not necessarily a failure in a spiritual sense. Anyone who thinks they are is indeed a narcissistic idiot.