Thursday, December 06, 2012

Transcendental Science Fiction



The Prisonis transcendental science fiction. I read it today. It gives you options to choose in the story. I'll try and read it again and pick different choices and see if it's different. I read it on my kindle.  It feels a little like 1984 or Kafka , except it has a more promising suggestion at the end. The author reports he's going to write an article for Wildmind about transcendental science fiction, which is how he would categorize it.

I don't like to summarize books, because you can just read it, and summarizing kind of kills it. I like to riff off of others works, so what will follow is thoughts I had thinking about the book.  Mostly I'm trying to figure out what transcendental science fiction could mean.

I love science fiction. The transcendental critique of religion exposes fake religion and spirituality.  It is about freedom and not bondage, dogma and cant.  How do we free ourselves from the bombardment of memes coming at us?  

The transcendental principle is beyond words, it's what truly spiritual words gesture towards, what makes the shadows. There are ways in which it's connected to the perfection of wisdom sutras.  The definition of transcendental: Of or relating to a spiritual or nonphysical realm.  There was a spiritual movement called Transcendentalism, which Thoreau and Emerson were examples of writers in that group.  (Unfortunately Sangharakshita (like Freud and Dickens) doesn't really appreciate aspects of America, and didn't like Thoreau)

I wouldn't say transcendentalism was completely non-physical, though. The thing I don't like about the word spiritual is that you might think it had nothing to do with the body, but when you focus in on things, your body is involved, and Reginald Ray even has a book called Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Bodywhich was one of the best Buddhist books in 2008.

You need the internal knowing and felt sense to guide you on the path.  Focusing is very useful, and I've not finished the book by Gendlin.

But I digress and digress. Go get this e-book and read it, it's fun:  The Prison by P.L.M. Baigent.

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