"Sounds like you do."

"I was speaking lightly."

I'm trying to skip playfully along surface of this conversation. I don't want to sink down into kind of answer I'd give a serious student. The truth is that I don't possess any mechanism that would allow me to be curious or concerned about future, but saying that doesn't make for breezy conversation.

"Jesus," she says, shaking her head. "My little brother has his own astrologers."

"Well, they're not really mine. They're just in attendance, so to speak."

I'm used to conversing with people who aren't awake and aren't happy about it. Everything else is chit-chat; talking for sake of talking, reinforcing illusion of self. I'm not against it, I just don't care to participate in it. My fault.

"So, you obviously have a great deal of influence over your students," she says as she sips her iced tea. I mull her statement over and decide that I don't have a response. I take another bite of pasta, wishing I'd ordered something with meat.

"I mean," she says, "they obviously hold you in very high regard. That's quite a responsibility."

She thinks, quite understandably, that she's my big sister and we're having a reunion; a nice little catch-up lunch. She's been thrown a curve with this little-brother/spiritual-master thing and she's trying to handle it. Does she think I'm a fraud? Does she think I'm running a game? Does she think that underneath it all I'm still really her little brother? I don't know and I don't much care. The fact that she's read Damnedest doesn't mean that she and I can speak; it means she should know we can't. She doesn't seem to be clear on that. Maybe she thinks enlightenment thing is just my day job and that I can step out of that role to be with someone who knows real me.

"I don't know. I suppose it's a responsibility."

"You don't know? Obviously these people are strongly influenced by you. You don't think that's a big responsibility?"

I shrug. The first thing she said to me when we got together was that I wasn't dressed well enough for restaurant. Such a statement is so alien to me that I could only shrug. Now it seems that every statement she makes is so alien to me that I can only shrug.

In accepting this lunch engagement, my hope was that I could slip back into my old persona enough to manage a civil meal. That was too hopeful. I can no longer impersonate myself and I am simply unable to formulate a reply to anything she has to say; I've forgotten my lines. We don't share a common tongue and there's no way I can make her see that. From her point of view she's saying perfectly normal, conversational things.

"Yes, I suppose it's a big responsibility," I say, trying to say something that sounds like I'm saying something.

She lowers her voice. "You hear a lot about people in your position taking advantage of that responsibility for... unsavory purposes. I hope you would never do something like that."

I could simply tell her what preview copy of book was meant to tell her, that we are no longer related because what I am now doesn't relate. But why say it? To satisfy myself? It wouldn't. To inform her? It wouldn't.

"You mean sex stuff? That sort of thing?"

"Whatever. Power corrupts. I just hope you'll be careful."

Sweet. Big sister giving little brother some advice on how to shoulder burden of power. Being in advertising, perhaps she thinks we have something in common; wielding power to influence people's thoughts. Maybe she thinks we're in same business, I don't know.

I set down my fork and sit back. "Well, when I walk through house, I always have someone proceed me with a boom-box playing Darth Vader theme music to lend a weighty and ominous air to my approach. And I certainly don't dress like this. I have, you know, robes, beads, and I always carry fresh flowers. Just trappings, all very tiresome, really, but minions expect it. There was a little resistance at first to having them call me Shri Shri Shri Shri Jed, but they got hang of it. And remembering to speak in first person plural there and singular here can take a little getting used to, but we are, I mean, uh, I am, happy to make effort. Noblesse oblige and all."

She stares at me for a moment, then bursts into laughter. I guess some ice has broken because we are able to continue in a lighter and friendlier manner, and eventually say goodbye with genuine fondness.

I doubt I'll ever see her again, but I'm happy knowing she's still in world. -Jed McKenna

::: About the Author

"Jed McKenna is an American original." -Lama Surya Das

::: The Line Is Drawn

The cogito is line between fantasy and reality. On one side of cogito is a universe of beliefs and ideas and theories. To cross line is to leave all that behind. No theory, concept, belief, opinion or debate can have any possible basis in reality once ramifications of cogito have fully saturated mind. No dialogue can take place across that line because nothing that makes sense on either side makes sense on other.

We all think we know what cogito means; this is an invitation to challenge that assumption. If professors of philosophy truly understood it, they wouldn't be professors of philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead said that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato, but all philosophy, Plato included, is rendered obsolete and irrelevant by Descartes. Nothing but subjective I Am is true, so what's point of prattling on?

The cogito isn't a mere thought or an idea, it is an ego-eating virus that, properly incubated and nurtured, will eventually devour all illusion. Once we know cogito, we can begin systematically unknowing everything we thought we knew, and unraveling self we aren't.

::: Life is but a Dream

There is no such thing as objective reality. Two cannot be proven. Nothing can be shown to exist. Time and space, love and hate, good and evil, cause and effect, are all just ideas. Anyone who says they know anything is really saying they don't know only thing. The greatest religious and philosophical thoughts and ideas in history of man contain no more truth than bleating of sheep. The greatest books are no more authoritative than greatest luncheon meats.

No one knows anything.

::: Disprove it for Yourself

Anyone wishing to deny these statements about meaning of cogito need merely prove that something, anything, is true. By all means, give it a try, dash your head upon it, but it can't be done. Cogito ergo sum, however, isn't endpoint of inquiry, it's starting point; it's a tool that helps us see, without intermediaries, exactly what is true and what isn't.

How great is that?

-Jed McKenna

::: About the Author

"Jed McKenna is an American original." -Lama Surya Das