He provides
a link to his bookThis is my fav review of it...
By L. Ron Gardner "Mystic-Author"on March 12, 2015
Goran Backlund bills himself as a philosopher who is spiritually enlightened, but I maintain that he is a mere sophist and is un-Awakened. In this grossly overpriced ($9.99) 37-page (really about 30 pages when the empty pages aren’t counted) ebook, Backlund simply reprises/repackages the iconic Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) philosophy of “pure reason” (adds a few defective wrinkles of his own), and presents the whole thing it as if it were a new Zen of philosophy. At the end of his discourse, structured as a quasi-Socratic exchange between himself and an imaginary intellectual stiff named Walt, he audaciously concludes that he has unveiled “the Tao.” Anyone who has studied Kant’s philosophy will learn little, if anything, new from this mini-text, and wonder why Backlund doesn’t credit Kant as the inspiration/source for his “insights.” And the philosophical cognoscenti (such as myself) who reject Kant’s philosophy as “pure crap,” will classify Backlund’s text as “Kantian Krap Redux.”
I could easily write a thick text refuting the rampant poppypenis permeating Backlund’s book (and I will gladly do so if someone offers me a generous sum), but since this is just a review, I will (by cherry-picking from my seven pages of notes) limit myself to critiquing select examples of Backlund’s balderdash. For those interested in the deep holes in Kant’s philosophy (and by implication, Backlund’s), I suggest Avi Sion’s “A Short Critique of Kant’s Unreason” and the chapter, The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy, in Ayn Rand’s “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.”
Goran begins his discourse by questioning Walt about the ontological staus of external existents:
"Take this coffee cup, for example," I say. "How do we know that it’s still here when we close our eyes?"… "Better yet," I say before he can answer, ‘"how do we know that it exists right now?’"
The answers are obvious, unless you’re a sophist like Goran. Others can see it when we close our eyes, and a camera could record its presence while our eyes are shut. We know it exists because others also perceive it, whilst scientific instruments would verify its status as a measurable spatial existent. But Goran, predictably, attempts to impugn the validity of the senses and the existence of objective reality (most notably, he fails to mention that scientific instruments corroborate the objective existence of the external objects that our sensory and cognitive apparatus tell us are real). A la Kant, he insists that we cannot know reality directly because our senses are faulty, and our cognition synthetic, a product of erroneous abstractions. Here’s a sample exchange of his with Walt:
“I say... we aren’t seeing the world directly."
"How so?"
"I mean, if we’re in direct contact with things themselves, how is it that a straight stick appears bent when halfway under water? Does the stick actually bend?"
"No, of course not. It just seems to," Walt replies.
"My point exactly. And if we acknowledge these illusions—that is, if we think of them as such— we must necessarily accept the distinction between the actual world and our experience of it, since the word illusion implies a situation where our subjective experience misrepresents objective reality."
"Fair enough," Walt says. "That makes sense."
"And here’s another example: Let’s say that someone else is watching that stick from another angle. He’ll have a completely different experience of it, won’t he? One that will be radically different from ours even though we are both looking at the same object?"
"Yep."
"But, would you argue that the stick somehow transforms itself according to who’s viewing it? Does it decide to take on another appearance depending on who’s watching?"
"No, of course not."
"Then we must conclude that its appearance in each of our respective views must necessarily be separate and different from the stick as it is in itself – which as such, remains concealed from us."
Unbeknownst to Goran, our senses are valid in that they tell us something exists. It is up to the mind to properly interpret the sense data. Clear thinking and closer investigation would reveal that the stick is not bent. And if Goran knew about and understood the Law of Identity (upon which all logic depends), he would understand that the stick is as it is independent of any perception or interpretation of it. But Goran, a deluded subjective “rationalist” rather than a clear-thinking objective scientific “empiricist,” subscribes to the “primacy-of-consciousness” school of philosophy, and rejects the “primacy-of -existence” principle. In other words, Goran believes in conforming reality to his consciousness, rather than conforming his consciousness to reality.
In short, Goran’s “shtick” (as exemplified by the aforementioned “stick”) centers on impugning the efficacy of man’s cognitive faculty and, in the words of Ayn Rand, divorcing reason from reality.
Goran writes, “But of course, there’s no way that objects can be ‘like’ the way they appear to us.” Yes there is. Hundreds of millions of people saw New England win the 2015 Super Bowl by intercepting a Seattle pass at the end of the game. And video replay of this fact, available on the Internet, corroborates that it truly happened. Maybe Goran lives in a different universe than the rest of us (or perhaps in a psychedelic-infested basement in Seattle), and thinks the Seahawks won the game.
Goran writes, “There’s no way in which ‘red’, ‘round’ or ‘hard’ could exist outside our experience – what they are is simply sensations; and they can neither be, nor resemble, nor be anything ‘like’ something else outside of experience – for what makes a sensation what it is, is the way in which it appears to us – and in no conceivable way could something outside of experience ever be anything ‘like’ that.” I guess it’s just an optical illusion that the basketball I’m now dribbling is round, and that dribbling doesn’t work with a non-round ball, such as a football.
Goran goes on and on, presenting one ridiculous example after another -- all in an attempt to convince us that our senses are faulty and that there is no real, external world. For example, he argues that we see nothing but colors [no, we see discrete objects with colors], that space and experience are the same thing [space exists independently of, and both before and after, one’s experiences]. His conclusion is: “There isn’t a world out there, just perceptions… there’s no outside… ”
Goran drowns in contradictions. If what he says is true (and of course it’s not), there is no way he can know what he says he knows. He writes, “There is nothing you can do to make yourself experience anything other than your own consciousness.” If this is true, then Goran has no business making any statements about the external world, because he could never have experienced it. He writes, "We form concepts by abstracting, and what we abstract from can neither be, nor originate from, anything other than our direct experience.” But according to Goran, direct experience of external phenomena is not possible, because all that we can ever experience is our own consciousness.
Goran has a blog, and claims that he is spiritually enlightened. I’m a spiritual teacher, and a long-time expert in multiple spiritual Dharmas – Pali, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhism; Hindu Raja Yoga, Advaita Vedanta, and Kashmir Shaivism; Adi Da’s Daism, J. Krishnamurti’s teachings, and Christian Hermeticism – and I say he’s utterly deluded. He reduces enlightenment to the pop Zen state of “seeing,” which is farcical. There is no “seeing” wthout a Seer, but Goran hasn’t realized himself as the Seer, or Self, or Divine Being, which is Siva-Shakti, or Sat-Chit-Ananda. His claim that he has realized Sat-Chit-Ananda is beyond laughable; he doesn’t even know what the term means.
I would like to give this book five stars – five negative stars, that is – but Amazon doesn’t allow it, so with great reluctance, and under contumacious protest, I’m upgrading my “grade” of it to a whole star.