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Link:\xa0https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/04/samsara/

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I.

The man standing outside my front door was carrying a clipboard and wearing a golden robe. \u201cNot interested,\u201d I said, preparing to slam the door in his face.

\u201cPlease,\u201d said the acolyte. Before I could say no he\u2019d jammed a wad of $100 bills into my hand. \u201cIf this will buy a few moments of your time.\u201d

It did, if only because I stood too flabbergasted to move. Surely they didn\u2019t have enough money to do this for everybody.

\u201cThere is no everybody,\u201d said the acolyte, when I expressed my bewilderment. \u201cYou\u2019re the last one. The last unenlightened person in the world.\u201d

And it sort of made sense. Twenty years ago, a group of San Francisco hippie/yuppie/techie seekers had pared down the ancient techniques to their bare essentials, then optimized\xa0hard. A combination of drugs, meditation, and ecstatic dance that could catapult you to enlightenment in the space of a weekend retreat, 100% success rate. Their cult/movement/startup, the Order Of The Golden Lotus, spread like wildfire through California \u2013 a state where wildfires spread even faster than usual \u2013 and then on to the rest of the world. Soon investment bankers and soccer moms were showing up to book clubs talking about how they had grasped the peace beyond understanding and vanquished their ego-self.