Thaddeus Golas

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Thaddeus Golas

Portrait by Sylvain Despretz
Born June 15, 1924(1924-06-15)
Paterson, New Jersey, U.S.
Died April 16, 1997 (aged 72)
Sarasota, Florida, U.S.

Thaddeus Golas is known for having written The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment (ISBN 0879056983), which has become known as a classic book on human consciousness and spirituality. 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] Early life

Thaddeus Stanley 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 3 times, lived in Paterson, New Jersey, New York City, San Francisco, Hollywood, California, Redway, California, 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 England, then France, where he served until 1944, briefly saw combat at the Battle of the Bulge. He returned to the United States and attended New York's Columbia University where he studied under such illustrious professors as Jacques Barzun, and earned a B.A. Degree (Class of '48). He first worked as a proofreader for Betty Ballantine, and later 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, experimented with LSD, and self published his book, The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment.

[edit] Published works

The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment is the only book by Thaddeus Golas that has ever been published. The book was first self-published and handed out as a pamphlet edition, but was quickly picked up by a San Francisco based Joe E. Casey, then, following a conflict with Casey, was salvaged by the "Seed Center", a back room of Palo Alto's Plowshare Bookstore, and eventually wound up at Bantam Books in 1979, where it remained in publication until 1993. Perhaps Golas' most famous piece of writing went utterly uncredited: In the 1950's, Thaddeus Golas wrote the first funny personal ad, as the Village Voice began publishing what was meant to be serious listings, thus starting a trend that continues to this day. The anonymous ad was quoted for years in many travel guides to the East Village, especially by John Wilcock in his hard-cover anthology. Golas, originally a poet, published a literary piece in Columbia University's The Columbia Review, which he titled "Ugly Ugly vs Pure Pure" in the spring of 1947. He also published a couple of cultural reviews under assumed names in the San Francisco Chronicle the 1970's. A handful of articles and interviews first published in the German language by Sphinx, a magazine based in Basel, Switzerland, later appeared in American monthlies ( 80's and 90's ) such as "Blotter", "Spirit Magazine," and "Sun (magazine)". Later in his life, Thaddeus Golas resolved that all the theorizing which led to writing "the Guide" needed to be followed by practical observations about our more “local” reality, as a means of dealing with the many “bugs” which continued to crop up in his paradigm - post-enlightenment, so to speak… He worked on a study of love as a mere exercise in agreement with reality and the ensuing pain of maintaining structural integrity in the face of too much pleasurable vibrational agreement. A new model of practical ideas for human living emerged…voluntarily less poetic, harder to digest, but which he deemed "hard information one could rely on."
…Publishing these ideas proved impossible and outright upset from his publishers over his later manuscripts led to the end of his contract at Bantam.

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 wrote The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment in a language that any reader of English could hope to understand; the simplicity of the book was clearly behind its success. The little “Guide” has a simple thesis: “Enlightenment doesn’t care how you get there.”
On a more subtle level, The book's title alludes to the idea that getting to Paradise should not require so much as lifting a finger; indeed, advising an approach of "no resistance", the author suggests that many spiritual practices are a denial of what is already manifest, and few among the posturing "wise and serious" have any "real intension on dissolving their attachment to structures and going on to another plane of existence."
"The trouble with Evil," suggests Golas, "is that it seduces us into trying to eliminate it."
At the core of the book is this axiom: “We are equal beings, and the universe is our relations with each other.” However, behind the apparent casual language, Golas introduced powerful and complex ideas…
Thaddeus Golas' work is original, and amounts to a sort of metaphysical String Theory.
It is 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 favored a spirituality inspired by Quantum Physics, General Relativity, and later Chaos Theory.

His chief interest was in mapping the mechanisms of Space, Energy, 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.

Thaddeus Golas equated Space with Consciousness:

"Basic entities are conscious space when expanded, unconscious mass when contracted, and alternating between these states as energy," he noted.

"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 composed 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. Expanding consciousness is not a process of expanding like a balloon, it is a process of PROLONGING your conscious state. You must be either conscious or unconscious in any given instant".

"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 is mostly described in studies of Electromagnetism and 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 of 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. If you stay conscious continuously, you will push away the material world, all of it. Other than prolonging your consciousness, there is no idea or action on earth that makes the slightest bit of difference to your spiritual future."
The New Age did not like him much either, in fact - he was banished by it. In his later life, he was attacked by detractors who criticized him for being “negative” in his vision of earthly life. Many rejected his notions that "God cannot do anything about our predicament" and that ours is a “lunatic local reality” in which consciousness has fallen, in favor of more playful views of the “purposeful” nature of human life. He countered that the New Age was chiefly interested in bending philosophy to suit the commercial thirst and hopes our era to the detriment of a straight view of things “as they are, by opposition to how we would prefer for them to be.”
He felt that many seekers in the Spirituality movement were about “channeling spirits, hugging trees, good vibes, pyramids, crystals, astrology, banal optimistic messages, and manifesting more reality into one’s life.” He said: "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."

"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."

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; when we attain a state of Space, we merely wake up where we have been sleeping".

Thaddeus Golas mostly cared about finding a “way out” of this reality – he did not espouse to glorify it. “The Turning Away from the World preached by Saints and Church Figures in past history is a message few wanted to hear,” he said, “I find a lot more comfort in knowing how it really works and knowing I don’t have to fix the chaos – the movie is always running and you must decide whether or not to participate; vote with your feet.”

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.
  • Thaddeus Golas went to High School with poet Allen Ginsberg and continued to "bump into him" over a number of occasions; he observed that Ginsberg seemed embarrassed by reminders of his Paterson, New Jersey origins.
  • Thaddeus Golas, while he lived in New York, enjoyed a close friendship with film maker Maya Deren; over the years, he garnered the admiration of contemporaries Timothy Leary and Alan Watts, though these two seemed to be primarily in awe of Thaddeus' swift book sales.
  • 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 Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment.