"Pushing Ultimates" inspires, then disappoints

After I got an email pitch for a book that demolishes religion but promotes a free-ranging scientific and mystical inquiry into the "wild wonder of it all" I soon found myself handing over $13.47 for a copy of Lew Paz's "Pushing Ultimates: Fundamentals of Authentic Self-Knowledge."

It's a self-published book, which I have absolutely no problem with -- having done the same with my own examination of ultimacy, "Return to the One."

Paz is well-informed and positively disposed toward science. He's also well-read in an impressive number of other subjects: mysticism, philosophy, politics, psychology, history, anthropology, to name a few.

You can read some excerpts from "Pushing Ultimates" here, and a review here.

I enjoyed the book, but finished the final chapter feeling disappointed.

Somehow I never got a feel for what Paz was promoting, except, perhaps, his own approach to coming to grips with the meaning of existence.

This last observation isn't a putdown. It's almost unavoidable in the spirituality and mysticism genres. People, including me, write about their own search for truth and what they've learned along the way.

I've got no problem with that, so long as it's recognized that "my way" isn't taken to be the only Ultimate Reality Highway.

Paz's life has been footloose and fancy free. He's traveled a lot. He's sampled sundry psychedelic substances. He's spent countless hours in libraries delving into the wisdom of the world. He's explored various systems of meditation and consciousness raising.

That's great.

Yet every time Paz asserted that a similar sort of quest is how the highest understanding of truth is attained, I couldn't help but think "This was your way, but is it everybody's way?"

Here's another problem I had with the book: either something can be said about the Ultimate, or it's a mystery.

If you know what the Ultimate is like, please tell me. Or at least give me some specific guidance about how to learn what you know. ("Keep on searching" doesn't cut it.)

If you're clueless about ultimate reality, then admit it. As a similarly clueless reader, this makes me feel bonded to an author in honest who-the-hell-knows? perplexity.

Paz, though, bounces back and forth between these stances. Obviously he wouldn't write 375 pages unless he felt he had something important to convey. Yet I ended the book not being sure what this was.

In the final chapter, "Concept of God," I hoped to find a wrap-up that would encapsulate Paz's philosophy of life. Early in the chapter I resonated with this:

It should be quite clear that depth of commitment in probing for the flaws and truths of your own religious concepts is essential if you seek to become more than an acculturated puppet, free to live an authentic existence, free of self-deceit.

...Almost everything in the universe has a multi-dimensional aspect to it, and there isn't anything that can be entirely grasped from a single, thus limited, viewpoint.

OK. Agreed. A few pages farther on I also gave a hearty churchless thumbs-up to these thoughts.

But, once again, what the nature of this "something other" is, we have no idea. The ways and means of the Absolute Infinite -- whether you call it God or not -- will forever remain beyond the grasp of human comprehension, despite all the theological volumes which claim otherwise.

That an individual can, through persistent spiritual discipline, personally have epiphanic contact with emanations of the Absolute Infinite, does not imply comprehension.

Right on. I also liked this forthright bit of self-revealing.

When I contemplate such things, the urge comes over me, (as it has on several occasions over the many months I have worked on this manuscript), to just grab my backpack, jump in my van and head fifty miles to the city, to my favorite funky little bar to drink pale ale, smoke a joint and wait for the band to start. When I reach a fine existential buzz, I pay no heed to the younger folk wondering about the old guy doing a weird tai-chi boogie in the strobe light dazzle, and just lose myself in the brilliant flickering.

I hear you, Lew. However, as I neared the end of the chapter I started to use my highlighter to put question marks next to some questionable passages. Such as:

Though this whole area of angels, allies and higher masters of a meta-spiritual sort, is rife with theosophical and religious distortion, and prone to delusion, hallucination, and egoic aggrandizement, something definitely wondrous and spiritual is going on

The skeptic humanist is going to start hyper-ventilating here, and justifiably so, considering all the simple-minded crap about angels that has flourished in both the New Age and traditional Christian ambits, not to mention Hollywood's contribution of the past decades.

And yet, by now, the reader should know no doors can be slammed shut when it comes to paranormal-spiritual realities. Let us recall that the universe and the numinous dimensions of the human mind are not only as strange as we have seen, they are most likely stranger than we are capable of seeing.

Well, Paz was right.

I did start mentally hyper-ventilating when I read those words, because they undermined what I'd enjoyed about the book up to that point: it's emphasis on open-minded not-knowing what the cosmos is all about.

Then I got to the next page and found...

Though the appearance of angels and gods of higher spiritual frequencies are anthropomorphically shaped by the mind when entering the human ambit of existence, they are not just subjective creations. As Aurobindo clarifies, such beings existed within their dimensions long before human consciousness arose, and are beyond all labels.

Hmmmm. So now we have a firm statement about objective reality: angels and gods exist.

And supposedly we know (or rather, Paz knows) that they existed before human consciousness did -- though I have no idea how a human consciousness could know that.

Maybe.

But there are so many "maybe's" if, as Paz said above, we don't close any doors "when it comes to paranormal-spiritual realities."

Maybe Jesus saves. Maybe Allah judges. Maybe gurus enlighten. Maybe angels guide. Maybe departed souls communicate. Maybe space aliens visit.

I don't know. Maybe some or all of these "maybe's" are true. All I know is that I don't know. And if someone else claims they do, I want more than a trust me from them.

Comments

[Stuart]

> Yet every time Paz asserted that a similar
> sort of quest is how the highest
> understanding of truth is attained, I
> couldn't help but think "This was your
> way, but is it everybody's way?"

Whenever someone makes a claim about "highest understanding," the obvious question is, "'Higher' by what standard? 'Higher' according to whom??"

Maybe I prefer sweetness to saltiness, so I'd say, "Ice cream has a higher taste than popcorn." This is just an expression of my own opinion, my own likes/dislikes. If I want to get some temporary good feelings, then ice cream will deliver them better than popcorn, according to my personal preference. That's all.

We've got our just-now experience, and then we can overlay it with any sort of thinking: spiritual/mundane, good/bad, higher/lower. It might be useful to recognize that all these dualities are made by thinking. That way, we won't exhaust ourselves chasing after "highest understanding," as if it were something that exists independently of our minds.

Ho, ho, ho to everyone. Enjoy the Pagan celebration of your choice!

Stuart
http://stuart-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/

[Jayme]

Happy festivus!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQFLqMyo0fo

[Roger]

Brian,

Regarding the statement,

"As Aurobindo clarifies, such beings existed within their dimensions long before human consciousness arose, and are beyond all labels."

---Could the Angels be the phenomenal presence of a ineffible atemporal absense?
After all, Aurobindo supposedly clarifies this.

[Brian]

Roger, your question is as unanswerable and baffling as the whole notion in the book that angels and gods exist, but aren't evident.

Sure, anything could be the phenomenal presence of an atemporal absence. You, me, the entire universe. That's pretty much what Plato thought -- that materiality is the reflection of immaterial forms.

But who knows? Kick a stone and it hurts. Maybe that's an illusion, but it sure feels real.

[Roger]

Brian,

I read through the link to, "Pushing Ultimates......," and Plumbell Publishing. If I order the book, within 48 hours, will I receive, in addition, a free copy of "Angels-Made Simple?" Haha...just teasing.

With that said, the noumenon/phenomenon discussion is rather enjoyable. Hopefully, there is more conversation to come.
Best wishes,
roger