Immagine dell'autore.

Da Free John (1939–2008)

Autore di The knee of listening

137+ opere 801 membri 1 recensione 1 preferito

Sull'Autore

Opere di Da Free John

The knee of listening (1972) 76 copie
Transmission of Doubt (1984) 15 copie
Perfect Philosophy (2007) 6 copie
The Gnosticon (2010) 5 copie
Green Gorilla (2008) 5 copie
The Spectra Suites (2007) 5 copie
The Yoga of Right Diet (2006) 5 copie
The Aletheon (2009) 5 copie
The Pneumaton (2011) 5 copie
The Seventh Way (2007) 5 copie
Perfect Abstraction (2008) 3 copie
Aesthetic Ecstasy (2007) 3 copie
The Eternal Stand (2014) 3 copie
De knie van luisteren (1987) 3 copie
Atma Nadi Shakti Yoga (2008) 3 copie
My Bright Sight (2014) 2 copie
Method of the Siddhas (1978) 2 copie
My Bright Form (2016) 2 copie
Reality-Humanity (2007) 2 copie
Fire Gospel 1 copia

Opere correlate

The heart of the Rihbu [i.e. Ribhu] gita (1973) — A cura di — 11 copie

Etichette

Informazioni generali

Altri nomi
Jones, Franklin Albert (birth name)
Data di nascita
1939-11-03
Data di morte
2008-11-27
Sesso
male
Nazionalità
USA
Luogo di nascita
New York, New York, USA
Luogo di morte
Fiji

Utenti

Recensioni

This is a collection of talks by Da Free John, mostly from around 1980. It includes a couple essays by his disciples. There are also some introductory essays by the editor Georg Feuerstein.

I'm a Buddhist and have worked in science and technology, so this book covers topics that I have thought a lot about. I think Da Free John's main theological foundation is out of Kashmir Saivism. What he writes sounds a bit like Yogacara Buddhism. The universe is some kind of play of consciousness, er, Consciousness. This book makes constant use of Capital Letters to indicate the mode of a word, whether it is referring to the mundane level or the Transcendental level. Typographical dualism leads to ontological dualism, apparently.

There are some really nice ideas in there, e.g. the universe is like a bunch of software routines, layers of software, each layer interpreted or execute by the next layer down. I have seen this idea proposed as a semantics for object oriented programs, for example.

There is a beautiful essay on E=mc^2 being a modern version of "Christ is risen." That is beautiful metaphysical poetry but it starts to fall apart when it is taken too literally. That's one problem with this book, is that it takes metaphors too concretely. Da Free John brings up Rupert Sheldrake's M-fields and morphic resonance and takes that to the hypothesis that somehow if everyone got enlightened then the physical universe would be transformed into light or some such.

One problem with the book is that it is long on theory but quite short on practice. The practice seems to come down too much on just hanging out with the Guru. The whole Da Free John scene did seem to turn somewhat into a cult. It's a tricky business. Any kind of devotion that leads to transcendence is probably going to look like a cult. Are there good cults and bad cults? Probably it depends mostly on the student. Each of us requires a path that suits our character.

I think this is the first book of Da Free John that I have read, though I first heard about him many years ago. Did I see him on South Street one night in Philadelphia late at night, just hanging out watching the scene? Someone that looked a lot like him, anyway! I was a bit dubious about what I would find in this book. I got a lot more out of it than I expected. I think he stumbles over the edge in a few places... but some of that is just me being overly fussy about scientific metaphors.
… (altro)
2 vota
Segnalato
kukulaj | Nov 16, 2016 |

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Statistiche

Opere
137
Opere correlate
1
Utenti
801
Popolarità
#31,839
Voto
3.2
Recensioni
1
ISBN
176
Lingue
1
Preferito da
1

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