Thaddeus Golas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
Thaddeus Golas
Portrait by Sylvain Despretz
Born June 15, 1924
Paterson, New Jersey, USA
Died April 16, 1997
Sarasota, Florida, USA

Thaddeus Golas is known for having written :
The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment (ISBN 0-87905-698-3) , which has become known as a classic book on human consciousness. The book was first published in 1972 by J.E. Casey of San Francisco. The Guide, as it is affectionately called by those who have read it, is thought by many to be one of the very best descriptions of, as well as a trigger for, the transcendental experience. It has been described many times as: "The last book you’ll ever need to read on Spirituality".

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Thaddeus S. Golas was born on June 15th 1924 in Paterson, New Jersey. He was the youngest of five children. Both his parents were of Polish descent and met in the United States. His father died when Thaddeus was four, and his mother later remarried when he was ten, but his stepfather later died of Tuberculosis.

[edit] Later life

He married three times, lived in San Francisco, Hollywood, and Sarasota Florida – his last stop.

[edit] Education and career

Thaddeus enlisted into the army in 1942 and became part of the 604th Engineer Camouflage Battalion at Camp Campbell in Kentucky. He shipped off to France, where he served until 1944. He returned to the United States and studied at New York’s Columbia University (Class of ’48). He became an editor for Redbook Magazine and later worked at Harper & Row as a book representative. He held several publishing related jobs in the Midwest, and finally moved to San Francisco, where he self published his book :
The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment.

[edit] Published works

The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment is the only part of his writing that has ever been published.
The book was first published as a pamphlet edition, but was quickly picked up
by the Seed Center, an eventually wound up at Bantam Books, where it remained
in publication for nearly 25 years.
Thaddeus Golas never lectured about the content of his writing, nor did he wish to “exploit his readers in any way” with seminars after having written The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment.

[edit] Concepts

Thaddeus Golas' work is rather unique in that it identifies a credible bridge between Science and Spirituality.
His philosophy operates like a piece of software that unifies all beliefs, religious systems, scientific models, and can even integrate or at least help to grasp how nihilistic views can cohabit with exalted spiritual insights.
Golas’ chief interest was in mapping the mechanisms of Energy, Space, and Mass,
and how they relate to the human experience of consciousness, through a process of expansion to space, or contraction from space through energy into mass.
"Space is to Energy as Energy is to Mass" is the formula at the core of Golas' ideas.
"Space pushes away Energy and Mass", he said. "Space Consciousness has no interest in controlling mass interactions".
He described the entire universe as comprised of an infinite number of equal entities all equipped with a simple, binary choice of options - to expand or to contract. This simple mechanism, according to him, quickly builds into a very complex system, from subatomic particles all the way to what we can experience as “a being.”
He described:
“There are two states of being: expanded and contracted. (It might be more precise to say standing momentum outward, and standing momentum inward, but those are awkward phrases to repeat often.) An entity must be in one state or the other at any given instant. It may sustain either state at will.”

"Energy is the rapid alternation between space and mass", he explained, "the devil,
the delinquent, the messenger who delivers only half the message, the marker of time."
He coined the notion that: Space propels energy, and energy compels matter – this process which we call the forces of gravity also relates, according to Golas, to the mechanism by which consciousness becomes entangled in the physical realm.
Golas saw Enlightenment not as a benign form of therapy, but merely the way out of this reality.
Golas was not fond of the New Age movement nor the propensity of its parishioners for wanting to attain control of physical reality;

"The New Age is a Tower of Babel", he said. "Trying to use Energy to get to Heaven -- it can't be done! --
-- You get to heaven by ceasing to be Energy."
“We only exist in the context of our equals, and Space Consciousness pushes away any state more contracted and less permeable
than itself. It is a mistake to think of Higher Consciousness as a storehouse of infinite Earthly data, and it is equally false to assume that Higher Consciousness wishes to manipulate
and control energy’s actions. Energy and Matter are simply the same “Higher Consciousness” functioning differently; we exist in perfectly ordered relationships of behavior, not of ideas.”

"I punctured the New Age fantasy of controlling physical reality with your thoughts.
This takes the status and snobbery out of being spiritual."

"The New Age considers this "negative" thinking, because they do not want to look at where we are".

Thaddeus Golas spoke of prolonging consciousness as the only action that could result in a change for the better.
When we attain consciousness, he said, we merely wake up where we have been sleeping.

Golas also said, "It isn’t as though our movement in this life is horizontal through time, since in a state of Space Consciousness, the time is always now".
Though many wish to remember catch phrases such as :
“Love it the way it is”, or
“What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens”,
Thaddeus Golas favored one notion above all else:

“No matter what happens, I am conscious all the time”

[edit] External links

[edit] Factoids

  • Thaddeus S. Golas is often confused with Thaddeus A. Golas, the movie actor by the same name.
  • The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment was in print for 30 years and translated into seven languages but Golas felt it was only really written for the English language.
  • He had no religious affiliation, and reckoned that if he had, he would never have had the open mindedness to conceive of the concepts presented in the Guide.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../t/h/a/Thaddeus_Golas_8a3f.html"