Title: The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment
Author: Thaddeus Golas
Publisher: Gibbs Smith (hardcover version)
Copyright: 1995
Review Score: 3.63 
Summary:
Golas wrote The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment in the early 70's while he was living in poverty in a small room on California Street in San Francisco. It was the height of the psychadelic era, and Golas intended the book to be a helpful guide to friends, other "acidheads" (LSD users) who were stuck in a "weird place." Despite his drug use or maybe because of it, Golas achieved an unusually clear and open state of mind during the writing process. The combination of his extraordinary awareness with his powerful intellect gives us a luminous re-interpretation of the world. We are the fortunate recipients of Golas' ability to express and organize his thoughts in a smart, succinct way that unravels the deeper meaning of life without the complication of religion or ideas about God.
Golas says we are all equal beings and the universe is our relationship with each other. We are constantly expanding and contracting our relationships. "A completely expanded being is space...space is an infinite number of our brothers and sisters in perfect bliss." And a completely contracted being is a "mass particle, completely imploded." The key to expansion is consciousness. Consciousness doesn't control the material world, it frees you from it.
Love is the universal tool that's available to anyone at any time for becoming more conscious.
Message of Love:
Love expands; the absence of love contracts
Score: 4.00
"Go beyond reason to love -- it is safe. It is the only safety."
Love is expansion, which Golas defines as the awareness of anything that enters your consciousness. It's experienced as comprehension and understanding. "When we are completely expanded," says Golas, "we have a feeling of total awareness, of being one with life. Contraction, on the other hand, is resistance, denial and illusion. It’s experienced as fear, pain, ignorance, hatred, evil and every other strange or uncomfortable feeling. At the extreme end, a contracted being has the feeling of being completely insane with resistance to everyone and everything.
Love is the action of being in the same space with other beings, and pain is the action of being separate. Each being controls and chooses his or her level of contraction or expansion. No one ever does anything to you. You are the sole determiner of your own experience through your own willingness to contract or expand.
Inspiration:
Score: 4.00
“Look at it, love it, and then get away…Don’t dwell on it, and don’t feel guilty about it. It’s the natural order of things.”
One of the most difficult and complicating aspects of being a loving being here on planet earth has to do with our preference to be in relationship with certain people. But shouldn’t a truly loving being be in relationship with all beings? It’s confusing because there’s a difference between a mind that holds no resistance to any being and the choice to be in companionship with certain beings.
Companionship preferences are based on vibration levels. Each level of awareness has a different vibration. Expanded awareness vibrates faster. Contracted awareness vibrates slower. Companions with different vibration levels either change and find a common vibration level or the companionship dissolves. Golas says it’s okay to “channel your attention to what is pleasant for you. What else is freedom for?...The point is to take your leave in a way that doesn’t hang you up.”
The path of non-resistance is often interpreted (erroneously) as being physically passive or putting up with bad situations. But non-resistance means there’s no resistance in your mind, no judgment of wrongness, no hate or blame about someone or some thing. You simply recognize you want something else, and you choose another experience for yourself.
“You are free to be anywhere you want to be in the world that is real to you now. And beyond that, you are capable of being in any time, on any vibration level, in any system, with whomever you like.”
Practicality/Relevance:
Score: 4.00
“Giving others the freedom to be stupid is one of the most important and hardest steps to take in spiritual progress. Conveniently the opportunity to take that step is all around us every day.”
When we deny someone the freedom to be wrong, we are equally wrong. This is because all we ever see is ourselves. The more bad thoughts and feelings we try to weed out of ourselves and others, the more there will be. Resistance to negative thoughts always results in the manifestation of negative experience. Or said another way, people experience violence in their lives when they deny and refuse to acknowledge they’re having violent thoughts. "The seduction of evil is precisely in that involves us in trying to eliminate it."
Golas says that most of us have no real intention of dissolving our attachment to structure or ego and going to another plane of existence. He asks us to remember “that your survival does not depend on any structure.”
Organization/Readability:
Score: 2.50
The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment is a fast and easy read, and most people will wiz through it in 90 minutes. Even though the Guide is almost 40 years old, the ideas still compel you to think, to re-examine your belief system, and to assess whether it needs updating. It’s likely you’ll read The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment again (and again).
One word of caution. The hardcover version of this book became available in 1995. In addition to the complete, unaltered version of the original Guide, it also includes a brief autobiography by Golas, and an expanded discussion and refuting of some of his ideas. In the end Golas asserts that “Love is always profoundly wonderful, but it is not the answer, the power or the means for our deliverance.” And then he asks us to consider why this statement is “less convincing, less inspiring than the text” of the Guide. Even one so aware as Golas can be confused, disillusioned and disappointed by romantic, worldly experiences with love. I leave it to you, dear reader, to decide for yourself which message of love rings true.
