Haunted Universe: The True Knowledge of Enlightenment
The audiobook edition of Steven Norquist's 'Haunted Universe' is a rather remarkable piece of work. It boasts excellent production values on both the audio and graphic design ends, but more than that, there's a striking additional power that's imparted to the text by Norquist's verbal presentation of it.I'm a long-time deep-delver into both of the realms straddled by the book - cosmic horror and nondual spirituality, to be specific - and so it was a fine experience indeed to stumble across it in 2010 in its print edition, and to read the words of a man who, after apparently experiencing a true spiritual awakening of the nondual variety, proceeded to talk about the shift in ways that made him sound like a literal incarnation of one of Thomas Ligotti's gothic mysteriarchs:"Do you want to one day know what is really going on? Then approach the Ultimate Truth with horror and hatred. That is the only way you can proceed. . . .The ultimate truth is the fires of hell. A flaming column of destruction. A whirlwind of annihilation. . . .The universe is filled with happenings with no author, actions with no actor. . . .  No one exists or has performed anything, ever. . . . A puppet is dangling. The universe is moving. . . .A look behind the curtain proves, there is no one there. There never has been."While reading such things on the printed page was already heady enough, I've now discovered that actually hearing the author speak them aloud in measured tones calmly, intensely, rather detachedly is unexpectedly affecting and, at times, unnerving.Norquist originally appeared on the contemporary enlightenment-seeking spiritual scene in 2003 with his brief essay , "What is enlightenment, no really, I mean, like what is it?""Study of books will not get you there, you need a shock," he wrote. "The easiest way I know is for an enlightened person to talk you into this perspective shift. The best books I have read were the ones that talked you into enlightenment."Written from a place that could be characterized as equal parts inner stillness (as Eckhart Tolle might say) and the unreverberant blackness of the abyss (as H.P. Lovecraft might say), 'Haunted Universe' is a worthy attempt at achieving that impossible-sounding goal, and in my opinion, the audio edition may represent its most potent incarnation.--Matt Cardin, author of 'Dark Awakenings