STRIPPING THE GURUS SeX, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment
GURULARI SÖYLEMEK _
Seks, Şiddet, İstismar ve Aydınlanma*
Ramakrishna homoerotik bir pedofildi .
Baş öğrencisi Vivekananda Hindistan'daki genelevleri ziyaret etti .
Krishnamurti yakın bir arkadaşının karısıyla yirmi yılı aşkın bir süre ilişki sürdürdü . Chögyam Trungpa kendini erken mezara kadar içti. Adi Da'nın dokuz “eşi”nden biri eski bir Playboy orta sayfa oyuncusu. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh kafayı bulmak için gülme gazı kokladı. Andrew Cohen, Aydınlanma Nedir? kitabının gurusu ve yayıncısı. dergisi, kendi bildirdiğine göre bazen "bir tanrı gibi" hissettiğini itiraf ediyor.
Bunlar, normalde duyarlı insanların bağlılıklarını ve sorgusuz sualsiz itaatlerini verdikleri, bağımsızlıklarını, irade güçlerini ve hayatlarının birikimlerini, kendilerine atfettikleri aynı "aydınlanmayı" kendileri için gerçekleştirme umuduyla teslim ettikleri "büyülü bilgeler"in tipik örnekleridir. "mükemmel, Tanrı'nın idrak ettiği" usta.
Neden?
"Tarikat karşıtlarının" iddia ettiği gibi duygusal açıdan savunmasız ve "beyni yıkanmış" olduğu için mi? Veya kendilerinin aynı tuzağa düşmeyecek kadar "çok akıllı" olduklarından emin olan özür dileyenlerin anlayışsız bir şekilde karşı çıktığı gibi "psikolojik olarak isteyerek baştan çıkarıldığı" için mi? Yoksa adananlar, safça açık kalpler ve susuz ruhlarla, Milgram'dan Zimbardo'ya kadar klasik psikolojik çalışmalarda kendilerini gösteren ve her birimizin hayatımızın her günü duyarlı olduğumuz, gücün ve itaatin içsel psikolojik dinamiklerine mi yürüdüler?
Gururlu "Kaba Çocuk" Cohen'in, sadık takipçilerinden birinin sinir krizi geçirmesine yanıt olarak gülerek söylediği iddia edildiği gibi: "Bu hepinizin başına gelebilir."
Bunun senin başına gelmesine izin verme. Kendinizi kaptırmayın. Hazırlıklı olun. Haberdar olmak. Dünyamızın en iyi ruhani topluluklarında bile perde arkasında neler yaşandığını öğrenin.
Bu kitabı okuyarak başlayabilirsiniz . _ _
* Belirli bir bireyin Stripping the Gurus'a dahil edilmesi, o kişinin kendisini bir guru olarak temsil ettiğini ileri sürmek veya ima etmek anlamına gelmediği gibi,
o kişinin seks , şiddet, başkalarının istismarı veya diğer yasa dışı veya ahlaka aykırı faaliyetler .
Guruları Soymaya Övgü _ _
Zeka, içgörü ve gerçekten şaşırtıcı araştırmalarla donanmış olan Geoffrey Falk , adanmışları nirvanaya ulaştırabilecek aydınlanmış guru kavramını
tamamen yerle bir ediyor . Bu eğlenceli ve bir o kadar da ciddi kitap, guruya bağlılığın yolunu izleyen veya takip etmeyi düşünen herkes tarafından okunmalıdır.
—John Horgan, Rasyonel
Mistisizm kitabının yazarı
Guruları Soymak muhteşem; şimdiye kadar okuduğum türünün en iyi kitaplarından biri. Araştırma titiz, yazı ilgi çekici ve genel tez: son derece doğru. Bir yıldız kitabı.
—Dr. David C. Lane, Kaliforniya Eyalet Üniversitesi
Bu sürükleyici ve rahatsız edici kitap, manevi bir öğretmene saygı duyan herkes tarafından okunmalıdır.
—Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine'in yazarı
Geoffrey Falk'ın geniş bir takipçi kitlesine sahip dini peygamberlerin ve vaizlerin keyifli ama rahatsız edici maskesini düşürmesi, tüm dinlerin guruları ve tanrı-insanları hakkındaki literatüre memnuniyetle karşılanan bir katkıdır.
—Dr. Narasingha P. Sil, Batı Oregon Üniversitesi
Çağdaş maneviyatla ilgilenen hiç kimse bu kitabı görmezden gelemez. Modern ruhani hareketlerin karanlık yanını, bu hareketlerin liderlerinin saklamayı tercih ettiği utanç verici -bazen kötü ya da suç niteliğinde- raporları açığa çıkarıyor. Falk, zeka ve alçakgönüllülükle ve dinin gerçeklerini terk etmeden, aydınlanma ve aşkınlık pazarlayan gruplara yönelik düzeltici bir eleştiri sundu. Bir zorunluluk!
—Len Oakes, Prophetic
Charisma kitabının yazarı
ÇIKARMA _
Gurular
Seks, Şiddet,
İstismar ve Aydınlanma*
GEOFFREY D. FALK
* Bu kitaba belirli bir bireyin dahil edilmesi, o kişinin kendisini bir guru olarak temsil ettiğini veya cinselliğe, şiddete veya cinsel istismara maruz kaldığını öne sürmek veya ima etmek anlamına gelmez. başkalarının istismarı veya diğer yasa dışı veya ahlak dışı faaliyetler.
İÇİNDEKİLER
Giriiş ................................................. .................................................. ......... v
Bölüm
BEN
Kötülükten Konuşma 1
II
Biraz Bubi _ _ _
_
III
Yakışıklı Ördek Yavrusu .................................................. ................................................... 12
IV
Anne Sevgili 17
İÇİNDE
Krinsh 26 _
BİZ
Seks ve Şiddet Sanatında Zen .................................................. ................................. 38
VII
Seks, Mutluluk ve Rock 'n' Roll ................................................... ................................................... 53
VIII
Altıncı Beatle 58 _
IX
Buradaydım, Bunu Yaptım, Şimdi Ne Olacak? .................................................. .................. 69
X
Akrep- Adam 76
XI
Olsa Bile 82 _
_
XII
Mo' Chin- Ups 86
XIII
Tay Sürprizi 92
XIV
Battlefield Teegeeack 95
XV
Werner'in Belirsizlik İlkesi .................................................. ................................. 103
XVI
Hamamböceği Yogası 107
XVII
Vahşi ve Çılgın Bilge Adam ................................................... _ ................................. 112
XVIII
Altmış Dakika 128
XIX
Mango Çocuğu 133 _
XX
Da Avatar, Da Bomba, Da Bum ................................................. ...................................... 141
XXI
Bazen Kendimi Tanrı Gibi Hissediyorum .................................................. ................................. 158
iii
XXII
Merhaba Dalai! 176
XXIII
Asana'ya Yukarı 192 _
XXIV
Sodomi ve Gomora .................................................. ................................................... 196
XXV
Lahanalar ve Doğa Perileri ................................................... _ ...................... 212
XXVI
... Rahibe Manastırına 227
XXVII
Gurular ve Mahkumlar 305
XXVIII
Manevi Seçimler 350
XXIX
Çileden Sonra 367 _
XXX
Daha İyi Hale Getirin 424
Temel Çevrimiçi Kaynaklar .................................................... .................................. 453
Kaynakça ................................................................ .................................................. .457 _
İzinler ................................................... .................................................. ... 509
Dizin .................................................. .................................................. ................ 511
Yazar hakkında ............................................... _ .................................................... 523
GİRİŞ
SEVGİLİLERİMDEN Rahmetli annemin çocuklarına terbiye verirken söylediği en unutulmaz ifade şuydu: “Emin olun ki, günahlarınız sizi bulacaktır.”
Bu bir dakika, bir saat, bir gün, bir yıl, on yıl veya daha fazla sürebilir, ancak eninde sonunda kişinin davranışlarının ayrıntıları muhtemelen yüzeye çıkacaktır. Bir kişinin toplumdaki yüzü ister bir azizin isterse bir günahkarın yüzü olsun, eninde sonunda "gerçek ortaya çıkacaktır."
O halde bu kitap, geçtiğimiz yüzyıl boyunca Kuzey Amerika'ya belirgin bir şekilde odaklanarak, dünyamızdaki pek çok "aziz ve bilge" ruhani lider ve onlarla ilişkili toplulukların cilalı görünüşlerinin ardında gizlenmiş olduğu iddia edilen günahlarla ilgilidir. .
Peki neden biri böyle bir kitap yazsın ki? Neden sadece “iyiye odaklanmıyorsunuz” ve bunun yerine kişinin kendi kişisel dönüşümü üzerinde çalışmıyorsunuz?
Her şeyden önce, başkalarını bu figürlerin peşinden giderek hayatlarını tehlikeye atmanın getirdiği acıdan kurtarmak umulur. Başkalarının acı çekmekten kurtulması için yapılan en temel bodhisattva yemini bile kişiye bu konuda üzerine düşeni yapmaktan başka ahlaki seçenek bırakmaz . Benzer şekilde, "aptal şefkatin" doğasına ilişkin en temel anlayış bile kişinin, sadece "iyi" olmak veya başkalarını gücendirmekten kaçınmak için bildirilen bu sorunları görmezden gelmesini engeller.
As a former
follower of Carlos Castaneda eloquently put it, in relating the depressing and
disillusioning story of her experiences with him, amid her own “haunting dreams
of suicide”:
v
[I]f some reader, somewhere, takes a
moment’s pause and halts before handing over his or her free will to another,
it will all have counted for something (Wallace,
2003).
Or, as Margery Wakefield (1991) expressed her own opinion:
As trite as it may sound, if I can
prevent even one other per- son, especially a young person, from having to live
through the nightmare of Scientology—then I will feel satisfied.
Second, I
personally spent the worst nine months of my life at one of Paramahansa
Yogananda’s approved southern California ashrams (i.e.,
hermitages/monasteries), and have still not recov- ered fully from that awful
experience. I thus consider this as part of
my own healing process. That is, it is part of my dealing with the after-effects of the “wisdom” meted
out in that environment by its loyal, “God-inspired” participants.
Third, with my
own background in Eastern philosophy, we may hope to do all this without
misrepresenting the metaphysical ideas involved. With or without that, though,
it is not the validity of the theoretical ideas of each path which are, in
general, of con- cern here. Rather, of far greater interest are the ways in
which the leaders espousing those ideas have applied them in practice, fre-
quently to the claimed detriment of their followers.
Fourth, the
mapping of reported ashram behaviors to psy- chologist Philip Zimbardo’s
classic prison study, as presented in the
“Gurus and Prisoners” chapter, yields significant insights into the origins and
pervasiveness of the alleged problems cataloged herein.
Fifth, to paraphrase
Sherlock Holmes, if we eliminate every- thing which is impossible, then what is
left, however improbable it may appear, must be the case. Becoming aware of the
reported is- sues with our world’s “sages” and their admirers, then, eliminates
many pleasant but “impossible” hopes one may have with regard to the nature of spirituality and
religion.
This book will
not likely change the mind of any loyal disciple of any of the spiritual
figures and paths specifically addressed herein. Indeed, no amount of evidence
of alleged abuse or hypoc- risy on the part of those leaders could do so, for
followers who are convinced that they have found “God in the flesh,” in their
spiri- tual hero.
INTRODUCTION vii
This text may,
however, touch some of those devotees who are already halfway to realizing what
is going on around them. And more importantly, in quantitative good, it may
give a “heads up” to persons who
would otherwise be suckered in by the claims of any particular “God-realized
being”—as I myself was fooled, once upon a time. And thus, it may prevent them
from becoming involved with the relevant organization(s) in the first place.
Ultimately, the
“see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” ap- proach to life simply allows the
relevant problems to continue. No one should ever turn a blind eye to secular
crimes of forgery, in- cest, rape or the like. Much less should those same
crimes be so readily excused or forgiven when they are alleged to occur in
spiri- tual contexts. That is so particularly when they are claimed to be
perpetrated by leaders and followers insisting that they have “God on their
side,” and that any resistance to their reported blunders or rumored power-tripping abuses equates
to being influenced by Maya/Satan.
To say nothing
in the face of evil, after all, is to implicitly con- done it. Or equally, as
the saying goes, “For evil to triumph in this world, it is only necessary for
good people to do nothing.”
In the words of Albert Einstein:
The world is a dangerous place to
live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who
don’t do anything about it.
The alert
reader will further note that, aside from my own relatively non-scandalous (but
still highly traumatic) personal ex- periences at Hidden Valley, all of the
allegations made herein— none of which, to my knowledge, except where
explicitly noted, have been proved in any court of law—have already been put
into print elsewhere in books and magazine articles. In all of those cases, I
am relying in good faith on the validity of the extant, pub- lished research of
the relevant journalists and ex-disciples. I have made every effort to present
that existing reported data without putting any additional “spin” on it, via
juxtapositions or otherwise. After all, the in-print (alleged) realities, in
every case, are jaw- dropping enough that no innuendo or taking-out-of-context
would have ever been required in order to make our world’s “god-men” look
foolish.
As
the Dalai Lama (1999) expressed his own opinion,
regard- ing the value of such investigative journalism:
I respect and appreciate the media’s interference It is ap-
propriate ... to have journalists
... snooping around and ex- posing wrongdoing where they find it. We need to
know when this or that renowned
individual hides a very different aspect behind a pleasant exterior.
As to the quantity
of reported “sins” covered uncomplimentari- ly herein,
please appreciate that I myself am, in general, in no way anti-drug, anti-alcohol, anti-dildo,
anti-secret-passageway-to-the- women’s-dormitory, anti-whorehouse or anti-orgy,
etc. It is simply obvious, by now, that any of those, when put into the hands
of “god-men” who have carved islands
of absolute power for them- selves in the world, only make an already dangerous
situation much worse.
Of course, all
such protests to the contrary, it is the very na- ture of the gathering and
publicizing of information such as this that one will be regarded as being
either puritanical or shadow- projecting for doing so. Why else, after all,
would anyone object to guru-disciple sex, etc., in situations where the
“non-divine” party too often is a psychological child in the relationship,
unable to say “No”?
The guideline
that “all’s fair among consenting adults so long as no one gets hurt” is
reasonable enough. So then simply ask yourself as you read this book: In how
many, if any, of the envi- ronments covered here has no one “gotten hurt”?
Finally, with
regard to the use of humor herein, the late Christopher Reeve put it
appropriately: “When things are really bad, you have to laugh.”
January, 2009 Geoffrey
D. Falk
Toronto, Ontario www.geoffreyfalk.com
CHAPTER I
SPEAK NO EVIL
The wicked are wicked no doubt, and
they go astray, and they fall, and
they come by their desserts. But who can tell the mischief that the very
virtuous do?
—William Makepeace Thackeray
ONE
WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE
that our world’s recognized saints
and sages have the best interests of everyone at heart in their thoughts and actions.
One would also
like to believe that the same “divinely loving” and enlightened figures would
never distort truth to suit their own purposes, and would never use their power
to take advantage (sex- ually or otherwise) of their followers. They would, that is,
be free of the deep psychological quirks, prejudices, hypocrisy and
violence which affect mere mortals.
One would
further hope that the best of our world’s sages would be able to distinguish
between valid mystical perceptions and mere hallucinations, and that the miracles and healings which they have claimed to have effected
have all actually occurred.
Sadly, none of
those hopes stand up to even the most basic ra- tional scrutiny.
Thus, it has
come to be that you are holding in your hands an extremely evil book.
1
It is so,
simply because it attempts to expose, to a wider audi- ence, the worst of the alleged
abuses which various
“god-men” have reportedly
visited upon their followers, and on the world at large, over the past century
or more.
In tracing that
line of degeneracy more or less chronologically, from the introduction of
Eastern philosophy into Western thought and action up to the present day, we
will meet the following “saints and sages”:
·
Ramakrishna, whose worship of the Divine Mother did not exclude
comparable ritual veneration for his own penis, or an equal interest in fondling
the genitals of his
male follow- ers
·
The brothel-visiting Vivekananda, Ramakrishna’s chief dis- ciple, who first brought yoga to
America via the 1893 World’s Fair, and thus paved the way into the West for all
following Eastern teachers
·
Jiddu Krishnamurti, the Theosophical Society’s eagerly an-
ticipated “World Teacher,” who later broke from that or- ganization, fully
repudiating it, and then embarked on a quarter-century affair with a woman whom
he believed to be the reincarnation of his late mother
·
Japanese Zen masters and scholars, whose support of the use of Zen
principles in the training of the Japanese mili- tary during times of war, and
reported physical abuse of disciples in times of peace, will give us serious
pause
·
Satchidananda, the “Woodstock Swami,” who repudiated drugs and rock
‘n’ roll, but reportedly retained a fondness for sex with his female disciples
·
The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, famed for his involvement with the Beatles, his alleged failed attempt at seducing Mia Farrow, and his efforts at teaching
the “real magic” of levi- tation to the late magician Doug Henning, among
others
·
Swami Rama, renowned for his purported demonstration of
parapsychological abilities under Elmer and Alyce Green
in the 1970s, as another “holy celibate” who apparently couldn’t keep
his robes on
·
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who reportedly once admitted, while
sniffing laughing gas to get high, that he was “so re- lieved to not have to
pretend to be enlightened any more”
·
Satya Sai Baba, whose claimed “miracles” have included raising
people from the dead, producing streams of “sacred ash” from his hands—a feat
easily replicated by secular magicians—and allegedly molesting hundreds of
young boys
·
Sri Chinmoy, the “stunt man of the spiritual world,” whose
disciples to this day periodically canvass campuses across North America with
flyers touting the purported benefits of meditation under his guidance
·
Buddhist monks in Thailand, who have been known to proudly exhibit
expensive collections of antique
cars, and to don disguises, sneak
out to local karaoke bars, and be caught with pornography, alcohol, sexual
paraphernalia, and more than one woman at
a time
·
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, whose FBI files con- tained the
observation, “appears mental”
·
Werner Erhard, originator of est group training, who brought us the
phrase, “Thank you for sharing”
·
Yogi Bhajan, the claimed “only living master of white tan- tric
yoga in the world”
·
Chögyam Trungpa, who brought Tibetan Buddhism to America, and
proceeded to drink himself into an early grave
·
Swami Muktananda, whose ashram living quarters in In- dia
reportedly contained a well-used secret passageway to the adjacent young girls’
dormitory
·
Muktananda’s name-changing disciple Adi Da (Da Free John, Da
Love-Ananda, etc.), whose “crazy wisdom” ex- ploits propelled him to exile in
Fiji in the mid-’80s, follow- ing allegations of sexual abuse
·
Andrew Cohen, whose own Jewish mother
has regarded his closed
authoritarian spiritual community as embodying a “fascist mind-set,” with its members
behaving like “Gestapo agents.” (Such closed communities
are of homogeneous be- liefs, have little exchange of ideas with the outside
world,
and possess no option of questioning
the leader while still remaining a member in good standing. Further, to leave the community is typically claimed to be
to throw away one’s only “chance in this lifetime for enlightenment” [van der
Braak, 2003].) She has further rejected Cohen’s claims of enlightenment,
comparing him instead to the “cult” lead- ers Jim Jones and David Koresh, and
even to Adolf Hitler
·
Ken Wilber, the “Einstein of consciousness studies,” who has at
times spoken with unbridled enthusiasm for the ef- fects of discipline under
both Adi Da and Cohen
·
Yogi Amrit Desai, formerly of the Kripalu yoga center, whose
followers there, when news of the claimed sexual ac- tivities between the
married Desai and his devotees sur- faced, displayed unique discrimination in reportedly forcing him to leave the center he himself
had founded
·
Assorted sexually active Roman Catholic priests—pedo- phile,
ephebophile and otherwise
·
The Findhorn community in Scotland, which actually func- tions
without a guru-figure, arguably doing more good than harm for exactly that
reason
·
Paramahansa Yogananda, author of the spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi, whose troubled
ashrams the pre- sent author can speak of from first-hand experience
With only a few
exceptions, the above figures have taught au- thentic Eastern philosophy of one
variety or another. They have further been widely recognized and duly
advertised as possessing high degrees of spiritual realization. Indeed, one can
easily find loyal followers singing the praises of each of these individuals
and paths, in books and sanctioned websites. (Both Steven Hassan’s www.freedomofmind.com site and the Rick A. Ross
Institute at www.rickross.com have many such
links to “official” websites.) To find the reported “dirt” on each of them,
however, requires a fair bit more
effort. Nevertheless, it is those alleged worst aspects, not the
often-advertised best, which leave formerly devoted disciples picking up the
pieces of their shattered lives, and wondering aloud how they could ever have
been so blind as to buy into the “perfect master’s” propaganda in the first
place.
This is,
therefore, a very “dirty” book. For, it presents not only the representative (and, after a while, completely unbelievable)
claims to perfection or God-realization of each of the forty or so ma-
jor and minor “authentic” spiritual figures considered herein, but also the
alleged shortcomings of each, as those have affected their followers.
Obviously, then, to cover all of that in a single text re- quires that only the
most grandiose of the claims, and the worst of the foibles and alleged abuses,
of each “sage” be mentioned herein.
Unless one
enjoys seeing other people suffer—or effecting or reliving one’s own process of
disillusionment—however, this is not going to be pretty. For, in probing this
lineage, we will find legions of alleged emotional, physical and sexual abuses
perpetrated “in the name of God,” by persons neither impotent nor omnipotent, yet claiming to be “one
with God.”
By the end of
all this unpleasantness, then, at least one thing will undoubtedly be clear.
That is, that with “gods” like these, we do not need devils. For, every evil
which one might otherwise as- cribe to Satan or Maya has allegedly been perpetrated by one or another “God-realized
avatar” or ostensibly “perfected being.”
Of course, the
forthcoming shocking disclosures will predicta- bly result in a good amount of
“wailing and gnashing of teeth” among obedient followers. Indeed, that is to be
expected particu- larly among loyal
adherents to each path for whom
the “perfection” and infallibility of their own leader is not open to questioning, even if they may allow that none of the other “sagely” individuals con- sidered herein are what they claim
to be. (Part of the value of grouping all of these pretenses and alleged abuses
together in a single book is exactly that one can see that the “unique” claims
of one’s own path are also being made, equally untenably, by numer- ous other paths.) Nevertheless, if we are
really interested in truth, we should still welcome
having the hypocrisies and (alleged) abu- sive evils of persons in
positions of spiritual authority be laid bare to the world. Exposing them to
the public eye, after all, is the only way to get them to stop.
Thus, “onward and evil-ward.”
CHAPTER II
A
BIT OF A BOOBY
(SRI RAMAKRISHNA)
[Ramakrishna] is a figure of recent
history and his life and teachings have not yet been obscured by loving legends
and doubtful myths (in Ramakrishna, 2003).
Ramakrishna ... gained recognition
from his devotees and admirers that he was [an incarnation of] Christ When
[Mahendra Nath Gupta, a prominent
disciple] told his Mas- ter that he was the same person as Jesus and Chaitanya,
Ramakrishna affirmed enthusiastically: “Same! Same! Cer- tainly the same
person” (Sil, 1998).
I am an avatar. I am God in human
form (Ramakrishna, in [Nityatmananda, 1967]).
THE STORY OF YOGA and yogis in the
West—and of their corre- sponding alleged abuses of power, most often
reportedly for sexual purposes—really begins with Swami Vivekananda’s lectures
at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.
Vivekananda’s
story, however, begins with his own guru, Sri Ramakrishna, the latter having
been born in India in 1836. (“Sri”
6
is an East Indian title of respect,
akin to the English “Sir.”) Thus, it
is to the latter that we shall first turn our attention.
As a child, the
boy Ramakrishna—who later claimed to be the incarnation of both Krishna and
Rama—“loved to dress up and act like a girl” (Sil, 1997). He was, indeed, aided
in that activity by relatives who bought him feminine outfits and gold
ornaments, to suit his own relatively feminine body and psyche.
One can very well see from the
extant photograph of Rama- krishna [e.g., online at Ramakrishna (2003)] he possessed quite well-formed and firm
breasts—most possibly a case of gynecomastia....
Ramakrishna
could also be described, in the jargon of modern medical psychology, as a “she
male,” that is, a male who, despite his male genitalia, possesses a female
psyche and breasts resembling those of a woman....
[Saradananda]
writes, apparently on the basis of the Master’s testimony, that he used to
bleed every month from the region of his pubic hair ... and the bleeding
continued for three days just like the menstrual period of women (Sil, 1998).
Nor was that the extent of the great
sage’s appreciation for the
microcosmic aspects of the feminine principle:
Once he sat after a midday siesta
with his loin cloth dishev- eled. He then remarked that he was sitting like a
woman about to suckle her baby. In
fact, he used to suckle his young beloved [male] disciple Rakhal Ghosh....
He ...
exhibited his frankly erotic behavior toward his male devotees and
disciples.... He often posed as their girl- friend or mother and always touched
or caressed them lov- ingly (Sil, 1998).
Anyone who is
suckling an adult is explicitly viewing/treating that adult as a child. If
there is any sexual attraction at all from the “parent” to the “child” in such
a context, there is no escaping the obvious psychological pedophilic component, even if the suckled
one is of legal age, as was the eighteen-year-old Ghosh. And if one grown man
(a “she-male,” in Ramakrishna’s case) is having an- other grown man (his
junior) pretend to be an infant, so that the first of them can pretend to be the mother to the second,
and liter-
ally suckle the second, in any other
context there would be no doubt at
all as to the fetishistic nature of the behavior.
Further, after
having met his foremost disciple, Vivekananda, for the first time, in the
throes of an “agonizing desire” to see the young man again, Ramakrishna
confessed:
I ran to the northern quarter of the
garden, a rather unfre- quented place, and there cried at the top of my voice,
“O my darling, come back to me! I can’t live without
seeing you!” Af- ter some time, I felt better. This
state of things continued for six months.
There were other boys who also came here; I felt greatly drawn towards some
of them but nothing like the way I
was attracted toward [Vivekananda] (Disciples, 1979; italics added).
Ramakrishna
went on to describe his favorite disciple various- ly as a “huge red-eyed
carp,” “a very large pot,” “a big bamboo with holes” and a “male pigeon.”
In later days,
the prematurely impotent, married guru once went into samadhi (i.e., mystical
ecstasy, generally involving
a loss of awareness of the
body) after having mounted the young Viveka- nanda’s back.
As to what
excuse the great guru might have given for such mounting had it not sent him vaulting into ecstatic
perception of God, one can only guess.
[W]e cannot ignore [Ramakrishna’s]
obsession with the anus and shit in his conversations. Even the experience of
his highest realization that there exists within the individual self the Paramatman, the repository of all knowledge, was derived from his
beholding a grasshopper with a thin stick- like object inserted in its
anus!....
His ecstasy
[i.e., as trance] was induced by touching his favorite young [male] devotees.
He developed a few strate- gies for touching or petting the body (occasionally
the penis, as was the case with Vijaykrishna Goswami, whose cock he calmed by
his “touch”) of devotees (Sil, 1998).
Of course, none
of Ramakrishna’s documented homoerotic be- haviors in the above regards would
equate to him having been a practicing homosexual. They equally, however,
cannot be unrelated to his own view of the female
body as being nothing more than “such things
as blood, flesh, fat, entrails,
worms, piss, shit, and the
like” (in Nikhilananda,
1984). Indeed, the “incarnation of the Di- vine Mother” himself divulged:
I am terribly
scared of women................................ I see them as a tigress com-
ing to devour me. Besides, I see large pores [cf. vagina sym- bols]
in their limbs. I find all of them as ogres....
If my body is touched
by a woman I feel sick..................................... The
touched part aches as if stung by a
horned catfish (in Nikhil- ananda, 1984).
Even the mere sight
of a woman could reportedly so negatively excite
Ramakrishna as to prompt him to
either run to the temple or invoke
the strategy of escape by getting into samadhi.
His attraction for young boys that may be considered as muted pedophilia
is often associated with aging impotent males....
Ramakrishna’s
contempt for women was basically a mi- sogynist attitude of an insecure male, who thought
of himself as a woman in order
to fight his innate fear of the female (Sil,
1998).
On other
occasions, the mention of any object which Rama- krishna did not desire (e.g.,
hemp, wine) would send him fleeing into samadhi;
as could strong emotion (e.g., anger) on the sage’s part. At his cousin’s
suggestion that those odd behaviors might have been psychologically based, Ramakrishna
“responded by al- most jumping into the river in order to end it all” (in Sil,
1998).
* * *
With those various factors
acting, it should not surprise
that Ramakrishna’s own
spiritual discipline took several odd turns.
During his ascetic practices,
Ramakrishna exhibited re- markable bodily changes. While worshiping Rama as his
devotee Hanuman, the monkey chieftain of the Ramayana, his movements
resembled those of a monkey [Ramakrish-
na was also an accomplished
childhood actor.] In his biogra- phy of Ramakrishna, novelist Christopher
Isherwood para- phrased the saint’s own description of his strange behavior: “I didn’t do this of my own accord; it
happened of itself. And the most marvelous thing was—the lower end of my spine
lengthened, nearly an inch! Later, when I stopped practicing
this kind of devotion, it gradually
went back to its normal size” (Murphy, 1992).
During the days of my [“holy”]
madness [as priest of the Kali temple in Dakshineswar] I used to worship my own
penis as the Shiva linga. Worship of a live linga. I even decorated it
with a pearl
(in Nikhilananda, 1984).
Nor was the
sage’s manner of worship confined to his own genitalia:
[Ramakrishna] considered swear words [to be] as meaningful as the Vedas and the Puranas
and was particularly fond of performing japa
(ritual counting of rosary) by muttering the word “cunt” (Sil, 1998).
Indeed, as the claimed avatar
himself told his
devotees:
The moment I utter the word “cunt” I
behold the cosmic va- gina and I sink into it (in Sil, 1998).
That is
actually not quite as odd as it might initially seem, for “cunt” itself derives
from Kunda or Cunti—names for Kali, the Hindu Divine Mother goddess, beloved of
Ramakrishna.
It is still
plenty odd, though.
In any case, in
1861 the recently wedded Ramakrishna began tantric (sexual) yoga practice with
a female teacher, Yogeshwari. (His marriage was actually to a five-year-old
child bride, chosen by the twenty-three-year-old yogi himself, and then left
with her par- ents to mature.) Rituals performed by the eager student during
that sadhana (i.e., spiritual
practice/discipline) included eating the culinary leftovers from the meals of
dogs and jackals. Also, con- suming a “fish and human meat preparation in a
human skull” (Sil, 1998). Attempts to
have him participate in the ritual sex with a consort which is an essential
component of tantra, however, were less successful. Indeed, they ended with the
sage himself falling safely into trance, and later simply witnessing other practitioners having ritual
intercourse.
Comparably, upon his wife’s coming of age, Ramakrishna tried but failed to make love to her, instead involuntarily
plunging into a “premature superconsciousness.” (Their marriage
was actually, it appears, never consummated.) That,
however, did not discourage the young woman from staking her own spiritual
claims:
[W]hile regarding her husband as
God, Sarada came to be convinced that as his wedded wife she must also be divine.
Following her husband’s claim that she was actually Shiva’s wife, Sarada later
claimed: “I am Bhagavati, the Divine Mother of the Universe” (Sil, 1998).
Such was
evidently the compensation for her being confined to the kitchen for days at a time by her husband, cooking, not
even being allowed to relieve herself in the latrine.
* * *
[Ramakrishna was] one of the truly
great saints of nine- teenth-century India (Feuerstein, 1992).
In a demonstration of the high
regard with which every loyal disci- ple holds his or her guru, Vivekananda
himself declared that Ramakrishna was “the greatest of all avatars” (Sil,
1997). That evaluation, however, was not shared by everyone who knew the great
sage:
Hriday, the Master’s nephew and
companion, actually re- garded him [as] a moron (Sil, 1998).
The venerated
guru later formed the same opinion of his own earthly mother.
In any case, as
part of his alleged avatarhood, Ramakrishna was christened with the title
“Paramahansa,” meaning “Supreme Swan.” The appellation itself signifies the
highest spiritual at- tainment and discrimination, by analogy with the swan which, it is
claimed, is able to extract
only the milk from a
mixture of milk and water (presumably by curdling it).
In mid-1885,
Ramakrishna was diagnosed with throat cancer. He died in 1886, leaving several
thousand disciples (Satchida- nanda, 1977). As expected, Vivekananda took over
leadership of those devotees.
After all that,
Sil (1998) gave his summary evaluation of “the incarnation [of God or the Divine
Mother] for the modern age,” concluding that, the swooning Ramakrishna’s status
as a monu- mental cultural icon notwithstanding, he was nevertheless “a bit of a baby and a bit of a booby.”
CHAPTER III
THE HANDSOME DUCKLING
(SWAMI VIVEKANANDA)
[Vivekananda] is seen not just as a
patriot-prophet of resur- gent India but much more—an incarnation of Shiva,
Buddha and Jesus (Sil, 1997).
Perfect from his birth,
[Vivekananda] did not need spiritual disciplines for his own liberation.
Whatever disciplines he practiced were for the purpose of removing the veil
that con- cealed, for the time
being, his true divine nature and mission in the world. Even before his birth, the Lord had
chosen him as His instrument to help Him in the spiritual redemption of
humanity (Nikhilananda, 1996).
BORN IN 1863 IN
CALCUTTA, Vivekananda began meditating at age seven, and claimed to have first
experienced samadhi when eight years
old.
He regarded himself as a brahmachari, a celibate student of the Hindu
tradition, who worked
hard, prized ascetic
disci-
12
plines, held holy things in
reverence, and enjoyed clean words, thoughts, and acts (Nikhilananda, 1996).
A handsome and
muscular, albeit somewhat stout and bull- dog-jawed youth, he first met his
guru, Ramakrishna, in 1881 at age eighteen. As the favorite and foremost
disciple of that “Su- preme Swan,” the young “Duckling,” Vivekananda,
was constantly flattered and petted
by his frankly enchanted homoerotic mentor
[i.e., Ramakrishna], fed adoringly by him,
made to sing songs on a fairly regular basis for the Master’s mystical merriment, and told by the older man
that he was a
... realized individual through his
meditations ... [an] eter- nally realized person ... free from the lure of ...
woman and wealth (Sil, 1997).
Vivekanandaji
took his monastic vows in 1886, shortly before his guru’s death, thereby
becoming a swami. (The suffix “ji” is added to East Indian names and titles to
show respect.) “Swami” itself—meaning “to be master of one’s self”—is simply
the name of the monastic order established by Shankara in the thirteenth cen-
tury. The adoption of that honorific entails taking formal vows of celibacy and
poverty.
Interestingly,
in later years, Vivekananda actually claimed to be the reincarnation of
Shankara (Sil, 1997).
In any case,
following a dozen years of increasing devotion to his dearly departed guru,
Vivekananda came to America at age thirty. There, he represented Hinduism to
American men and women at the 1893 Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago.
A total stranger to the world of
extroverted, educated, and affluent women, he was charmed by their generosity,
kind- ness, and frankly unqualified admiration for and obsession with a
handsome, young, witty, and somewhat enchantingly naïve virgin male from a
distant land (Sil, 1997).
The
earlier-celebrated purity and enjoyment of “clean acts,” and “freedom from the
lure of women” guaranteed to Vivekananda by Ramakrishna, would nevertheless at first glance appear to have
been somewhat incomplete. For, the former once admitted that, following the
death of his father in 1884,
he visited brothels and consumed
alcoholic beverages in the company of his friends (Sil, 1997).
Thankfully for
his legacy, though, Vivekananda was not actu- ally partaking of the various
ladies’ delights in those houses. Rather, by his own testimony, he was simply
dragged there once by
his friends, who hoped to cheer him up after his father’s death. He,
however, after a few drinks, began lecturing to them about what might become of
them in their afterlives for such debauchery. He was subsequently kicked out by
his friends for being that “wet blanket,” and stumbled home alone, thoroughly
drunk (Sil, 2004).
So it was just
a few drinks too many. In a whorehouse. Noth- ing unexpected from a savior
“chosen by God as His instrument to help Him” in the salvation of humanity.
Either way,
though, “if you keep on playing with fire” you’re going to get burned, as
Vivekananda himself observed:
Once in me rose the feeling of lust.
I got so disgusted with myself that I sat on a pot of burning tinders, and it
took a long time for the wound to heal (in Sil, 1997).
* * *
[I]t is my ambition to conquer the
world by Hindu thought— to see Hindus from the
North Pole to the South Pole (Viveka- nanda, in [Sil, 1997]).
It was not long
after that announcement that Vivekananda was proudly claiming to have “helped
on the tide of Vedanta which is flooding the world.” He was likewise soon
predicting that “before ten years elapse a vast majority of the English people
will be Ve- dantic” (in Sil, 1997).
The
enthusiastic young monk’s hopes of effecting global change, further, were not
limited to a spiritual revolution, of “Hin- dus ‘round the world.” Rather,
among his other vast dreams were those of a socially progressive, economically
sovereign and politi- cally stable India (Sil, 1997).
The realization
of those goals, however, was to come up against
certain concrete realities not anticipated by the swami, in- cluding the need to think ahead in manifesting one’s ideas. Indeed,
Vivekananda was, it seems, explicitly opposed to such an ap- proach:
Plans! Plans! That is why you
Western people can never cre- ate a religion! If any of you ever did, it was
only a few Catho- lic saints who had no plans. Religion was never, never
preached by planners! (in Nikhilananda, 1996).
Not surprisingly,
then, given this antipathy, before the end of 1897 Vivekananda was already
down-sizing his goals:
I have roused a good many of our
people, and that was all I wanted (in Nikhilananda, 1996).
Further, as
Chelishev (1987) observed with regard to the so- cial improvements advocated by
the naïve monk:
Vivekananda approached the solution
of the problem of so- cial inequality from the position of Utopian Socialism,
plac- ing hopes on the good will and magnanimity of the proper- tied classes.
Understandably,
within a year the swami had realized the fu- tility of that approach:
I have given up at present my plan
for the education of the masses (in Sil, 1997).
It will come by degrees. What I now
want is a band of fiery missionaries. We must have a College in Madras to teach
comparative religions ... we must have a press, and papers printed in English
and in the vernaculars (Vivekananda, 1947).
As one frustrated devotee
finally put it:
Swami had good ideas—plenty—but he carried nothing
out
.... He only talked
(in Sil, 1997).
* * *
Vivekananda claimed to have
experienced, in 1898, a vision of Shiva Himself. In that ecstasy, he “had been
granted the grace of Amarnath, the Lord of Immortality, not to die until he
himself willed it” (Nikhilananda, 1996).
The
chain-smoking, diabetic sage, apparently “going gentle into that dark night,”
nevertheless passed away only a few years
later, in 1902, after years of
declining health. Reaching only an unripe age of thirty-nine, he “thus fulfill[ed]
his own prophecy: ‘I shall not live to be forty years old’” (Nikhilananda,
1996).
Of course,
there are prophecies, and then there are earlier prophecies:
Vivekananda declared solemnly: “This
time I will give hun- dred years to my body. This
time I have to perform
many
difficult tasks.... In this life I
shall demonstrate my powers much more than I did in my past life” (Sil, 1997).
* * *
In spite of those many reversals,
Vivekananda foresaw great and lasting effects on the world for his teachings:
The spiritual ideals emanating from
the Belur Math [one of Vivekananda’s monasteries/universities], he once said to
Miss MacLeod, would influence the thought-currents of the world for 1100
years....
“All these
visions are rising before me”—these were his very words (Nikhilananda, 1996).
The Vedanta
Society which preserves Vivekananda’s brand of Hinduism has a current
membership of only around 22,000 indi- viduals, and a dozen centers worldwide.
It would thus not likely qualify as any large part of the “global spiritual
renaissance” grandly and grandiosely envisioned by the swami. The better part
of Vivekananda’s actual legacy, then, beyond mere organizational PR, may
consist simply in his having paved the way for the other Eastern teachers who
followed him into America in the succeeding century.
CHAPTER IV
MOTHER DEAREST
(AUROBINDO)
When it was also understood in the
East that the Great Chain [or ontological hierarchy of Being, manifesting through causal, astral and physical
realms] did indeed un- fold or evolve over time, the great Aurobindo expounded
the notion with an unequalled genius (Wilber, 2000a; italics added).
IN “SIDEBAR A” TO HIS BOOMERITIS novel—originally written as a
non-fiction work—Ken Wilber (2002), the
“Einstein of conscious- ness research,” has one of that book’s
characters refer to Aurobindo
(1872 – 1950) as “the world’s greatest philosopher-sage.” Even in his much
earlier (1980) Atman Project, he
already had Aurobindo designated as “India’s greatest modern sage.” And, more
recently, in his foreword to A. S. Dalal’s (2000)
A Greater Psychology, he has again
averred that “Sri Aurobindo Ghose was India’s greatest modern
philosopher-sage.” Likewise, in his own (2000)
Integral Psychology, he has Aurobindo
appointed as India’s “greatest mod- ern philosopher-sage.”
So, if there’s
one thing we can safely
conclude....
17
The yogic
scholar Georg Feuerstein, among others, fully
shares Wilber’s complimentary evaluation of Aurobindo. Agehan- anda
Bharati (1976), however, offered a somewhat different per- spective:
I do not agree with much of what he
said; and I believe his Life Divine ...
could be condensed to about
one-fifth of its size without any substantial loss of content and message....
[Q]uite tedious reading for all those who have done mystical and religious
reading all their lives, but fascinating and full of proselytizing vigor for
those who haven’t, who want some- thing of the spirit, and who are
impressionable.
Bharati himself
was both a scholar and a swami of the Rama- krishna Order.
Aurobindo, in
any case, whether a “great philosopher” or not, could well be viewed as having
wobbled mightily about the center, if one were to consider his purported
contributions to the Allied World War II effort:
Sri
Aurobindo put all his [e.g., astral] Force behind the Allies
and especially Churchill. One particular event in which he had a hand was the
successful evacuation from Dunkirk. As some history books note, the German forces refrained “for in-
explicable reasons” from a quick advance which would have been fatal for the
Allies (Huchzermeyer, 1998).
Other admirers
of Aurobindo (e.g.,
GuruNet, 2003) regard that
Allied escape as being aided by a fog which the yogi explicitly helped, through
his powers of consciousness, to roll in over the wa- ter, concealing the
retreating forces.
Aurobindo’s
spiritual partner, “the Mother,” is likewise be- lieved to have advanced the
wartime labor via metaphysical means:
Due to her occult faculties the
Mother was able to look deep into Hitler’s being and she saw that he was in
contact with an asura [astral demon]
who is at the origin of wars and makes every possible effort to prevent the
advent of world unity (Huchzermeyer, 1998).
When Hitler was gaining success
after success and Mother was trying in the opposite
direction, she said the shining be-
ing who was guiding Hitler used to
come to the ashram from time to time to see what was happening. Things changed
from bad to worse. Mother decided on a fresh strategy. She took on the
appearance of that shining being, appeared be- fore Hitler and advised him to
attack Russia. On her way back to the ashram, she met that being. The being was
in- trigued by Mother having stolen a march over him. Hitler’s attack on Russia
ensured his downfall....
Mother saw in
her meditation some Chinese people had reached Calcutta and recognized the
danger of that warning. Using her occult divine power, she removed the danger
from the subtle realms. Much later when the Chinese army was edging closer to
India’s border, a shocked India did not know which way to turn. The Chinese
decided on their own to withdraw, much to the world’s surprise. Mother had pre-
vented them from advancing against
India by canceling their
power in the subtle realms (MSS, 2003).
Nor were those
successful attempts at saving the world from the clutches of evil even the most
impressive of the Mother’s claimed subtle activities:
She had live contacts with several
gods. Durga used to come to Mother’s meditations regularly. Particularly during
the Durga Puja when Mother gave darshan, Durga
used to come a day in advance. On one occasion, Mother explained to Dur- ga the
significance of surrender to the Supreme. Durga said because she herself was a
goddess, it never struck her that she should surrender to a higher power.
Mother showed Durga the progress she could make by surrendering to the Supreme.
Durga was agreeable and offered her surrender to the Divine (MSS, 2003).
The Mother
further believed herself to have been, in past
lives, Queen Elizabeth of England—the sixteenth-century daugh- ter of
Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Also, Catherine of Russia (wife of Peter the
Great), an Egyptian Queen, the mother of Moses, and Joan of Arc.
Her
diary entries reveal that even during her illness
she con- tinued through her sadhana to exert an occult influence on
men and events (Nirodbaran, 1990).
[The Mother] is the Divine Mother
[i.e., as an incarnation or avatar] who has consented to put on her the cloak
of obscu- rity and suffering and ignorance so that she can effectively lead
us—human beings—to Knowledge and Bliss and Anan- da and to the Supreme Lord (in
Aurobindo, 1953).
In the person of [the Mother],
Aurobindo thus saw the de- scent of the Supermind. He believed she was its avatara or descent into the Earth plane.
As the incarnate Supermind she was changing the consciousness on which the
Earth found itself, and as such her work was infallible She does
not merely embody the Divine, he
instructed one follower, but is in
reality the Divine appearing to be human (Minor, 1999; italics added).
India’s
independence from British rule followed soon after the end of WWII. Aurobindo
himself marked the occasion in public speech:
August 15th, 1947 is
the birthday of free India. It marks for her the end of an old era, the
beginning of a new age....
August 15th is my own birthday
and it is naturally grati- fying to me that it should have
assumed this vast signifi- cance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous
accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps
on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition (in
Nirodbaran, 1990).
This, then, on
top of his believed Allied war efforts, was the grandiose state of mind of “the
world’s greatest philosopher-sage.” Note further that this, like the Mother’s
diary entries, was Auro- bindo’s own documented claim, not merely a possible
exaggeration made on his behalf by his followers. For all of the private hubris
and narcissism of our world’s guru-figures, it is rare for any of them to so brazenly exhibit the same
publicly, as in the above in- flations.
And, as always,
there are ways of ensuring loyalty to the guru and his Mother, as Aurobindo
(1953; italics added) himself noted:
[A student] had been progressing
extremely well because he opened himself to the Mother; but if he allows
stupidities like [an unspecified, uncomplimentary remark made by an-
other devotee about the Mother] to enter his mind, it may in- fluence him,
close him to the Mother and stop his progress.
As for [the
disciple who made the “imbecilic” remark], if he said and thought a thing like
that (about the Mother) it explains why
he has been suffering in health so much lately. If one makes oneself a mouthpiece of the hostile forces and
lends oneself to their falsehoods, it is not surprising that something in him
should get out of order.
To a follower
who later asked, “What is the best means for the sadhaks [disciples] to avoid suffering due to the action of the
hos- tile forces?” Aurobindo (1953; italics added) replied: “Faith in the
Mother and complete surrender.”
[Physical nearness to the Mother,
e.g., via living in the ash- ram] is indispensable for the fullness of the sadhana on the physical plane.
Transformation of the physical and external being is not possible otherwise [italics added] (Aurobindo, 1953).
Such teachings,
of course, provide a compelling reason to stay in the ashram. In all such
cases, whatever the original motivations of the leaders in emphasizing such
constraints may have been, there is an obvious effect in practice. That is, an
effect of making their disciples afraid to leave their communities, or even to
ques- tion the “infallibility” of the “enlightened” leaders in question.
As with other
important spiritual action figures, of course, the exalted philosopher-sage
known as Aurobindo did not evolve to that
point without having achieved greatness in previous lives:
Sri Aurobindo was known in his
ashram as the rebirth of Napoleon. Napoleon’s birthday was also August 15th In
his
previous births, it was believed he
was Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Krishna and many other persons too. Someone
asked Sri Aurobindo whether he had been Shakespeare as well, but could not
elicit an answer (GuruNet, 2003).
Being an
incarnation of Krishna would, of course, have made Aurobindo an avatar, as he
himself indeed explicitly claimed (1953) to be regardless. As we will see more of later,
however, there is competition
among other spiritual paths for many of those same reincarnational honors.
Further, da
Vinci lived from 1452 to 1519, while Michelangelo walked this Earth from 1475 to 1564. Given
the chronological over- lap between those two lives, this
reincarnation, if taken as true, could thus only have been “one soul incarnating/emanating
in two bodies.” That is, it could not have been da Vinci himself
reincarnat- ing as Michelangelo. Thus, the latter’s skills could not
have been based on the “past life” work of the former.
Or perhaps no
one ever bothered to simply look up the rele- vant dates, before making and
publicizing those extravagant claims.
At any rate,
the purported da Vinci connection does not end there:
[E]arly in
1940, [a disciple of Aurobindo’s] came in and showed the Mother a print of the
celebrated “Mona Lisa,” and the following brief conversation ensued:
Mother: Sri Aurobindo was the artist. Champaklal: Leonardo da Vinci?
Mother smiled
sweetly and said:
yes.
Champaklal: Mother, it seems this [painting] is yours? Mother: Yes, do you not see the resemblance? (Light, 2003).
Evidently,
then, not only was Aurobindo allegedly the reincar- nation of Leonardo da
Vinci, but his spiritual partner, the Mother, claimed to be the subject of the
Mona Lisa portrait.
“Since the beginning of earthly
history,” the Mother ex- plained, “Sri Aurobindo has always presided over the
great earthly transformations, under one form or another, under one name or
another” (Paine, 1998).
For my own part, however, statements such as that remind me of nothing so much as my own growing
up with a hyperactive cousin who could not stop arguing about which was the
“strongest dinosaur.” My own attitude to such conversations is simply: “Please,
stop. Please.”
In any case,
even such “great earthly transformers” as Auro- bindo still evidently stand “on
the shoulders of other spiritual gi- ants”:
It is a fact that I was hearing
constantly the voice of Vive- kananda speaking to me for a fortnight
in the jail [in 1908]
in my solitary mediation and felt
his presence (Aurobindo, 1953).
Aurobindo and
his Mother again claimed to have single- handedly turned the tide of WWII, and
asserted that the former sage has
“presided over the great earthly transformations” for time immemorial. If one believes
that, the impressiveness of the spirit of
Vivekananda allegedly visiting him in prison would pale by com- parison. The
same would be true for the idea of Aurobindo being “the world’s greatest
philosopher-sage.” For, the yogi made far
more grandiose claims himself, and indeed could therefore have easily taken
such contemporary recognition of his greatness as be- ing little more than
“damning with faint praise.”
At any rate,
short of believing that Aurobindo’s and the Moth- er’s vital roles in WWII were exactly what they themselves claimed those to be, there are only two possible conclusions.
That is, that both he and she were wildly deluded, and unable to distinguish fact from fiction or reality from their
own fantasies; or that they were both outright fabricating their own
life-myths.
So: Do you believe that one “world’s greatest
philosopher-sage” and his “infallible” spiritual partner—who herself “had live
con- tacts with several gods,” teaching
them in the process—in southern India radically changed the course of human
history in unparal- leled ways, simply via their use of metaphysical Force and
other occult faculties?
I, personally, do not.
There is, of course, competition for the title of
“India’s greatest modern sage.” For example, in his foreword to Inner
Directions’ recent (2000) reissue of Talks
with Ramana Maharshi, Wilber himself had given comparably high praise to
Ramana:
“Talks”
is the living voice of the greatest sage [italics added] of the
twentieth century.
That feting
comes, predictably, in spite of Wilber’s having never sat with, or even met,
Maharshi, knowing him only through his extant, edited writings.
One may well be
impressed by Maharshi’s “unadorned, bot- tom-line” mysticism of simply
inquiring, of himself, “Who am I?”— in the attempt to “slip into the witnessing
Self.” Likewise, his claim that “Love is not different from the Self ... the Self is love” (in
Walsh, 1999) is
sure to make one feel warm and fuzzy inside. Nev- ertheless, the man was not
without his eccentricities:
[T]he Indian sage Ramana Maharshi
once told Paul Brunton that he had visions of cities beneath the sacred
mountain of Arunachala where he resided all his adult life (Feuerstein, 1998).
Indeed, in Talk
143 from Volume 1 of the infamous Talks
with Sri Ramana Maharshi (2000)—the very text upon which Wilber has above
commented—we find:
In visions I have seen caves, cities
with streets, etc., and a whole world in it.... All the siddhas [“perfected beings”] are reputed to be there.
Were such
subterranean cities to be taken as existing on the physical level, however, they could not so exist now or in the past
without previous, historic “Golden Ages” and their respective civi- lizations,
with those civilizations being more advanced than our own. That idea, however,
is generally explicitly taken as being the product only of magical/mythical
thinking and the like:
[T]he romantic transcendentalists
... usually confuse aver- age-mode consciousness and growing-tip consciousness,
or average lower and truly advanced, [and] use that confusion to claim that the past epochs were some
sort of Golden Age which we have subsequently destroyed. They confuse magic and
psychic, myth and subtle archetype (Wilber, 1983a).
The question
then becomes: Do you believe that
“all the sid- dhas” are living in
(even astral) cities and caves, beneath one par- ticular mountain in India?
(Mountains are actually regarded as holy in cultures throughout the world, and
as being symbols of the astral spine. To take their holiness and “natural abode
of souls” nature literally, however, is highly unusual.) If not, was the “great- est sage of the century”
hallucinating? If so....
Or, even if not:
All the food [in Maharshi’s ashram]
was prepared by brah- mins so that it
should remain uncontaminated by contact with lower castes and foreigners....
“Bhagavan
always insisted on caste observances in the ashram here, though he was not
rigidly orthodox” [said Miss Merston, a long-time devotee of Maharshi]
(Marshall, 1963).
[Maharshi] allowed himself
to be worshiped like a Buddha
(Daniélou, 1987).
“Greatest
sage”—for whom “the Self is love,” but lower castes and foreigners evidently
aren’t, in spite of his supposed impartial witnessing of all things
equally, and in spite of the fact that he was
not otherwise “rigidly orthodox” or bent on following religious pro- scriptions.
Sadly, as we
shall see, that sort of brutal inconsistency should be no less than expected
from the “great spiritual personages” of our world.
CHAPTER V
THE KRINSH
(JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI)
The messiah, or World Teacher, was
made to correspond with the
traditional Hindu figure of the Avatar, a deific per- son sent to the world at
certain crucial times to watch over the dawn of a new religious era (Vernon,
2001).
No one used that term [i.e., “World
Teacher”] in my child- hood. As I could not pronounce his name, Krishnamurti,
he was known to me always, as Krinsh (Sloss, 2000).
Madame B Down in Adyar
Liked the Masters
a lot ... But the Krinsh,
Who lived out in Ojai, Did NOT!
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI WAS DISCOVERED as a teenage boy by Charles Leadbeater of the Theosophical Society, on a beach in
Ma- dras, India, in 1909.
26
The
Theosophical Society itself had been founded in New York City by the
east-European “seer” Madame Helena P. Blavatsky (HPB), in 1875. Its membership
soon numbered over 100,000; an Asian headquarters was established in Adyar,
India, in 1882.
The Theosophical Society ... was at
first enormously success- ful and attracted converts of the intellectual
stature of the inventor Thomas Edison and Darwin’s friend and collabora- tor
Alfred Russel Wallace (Storr, 1996).
No less an authority than [Zen
scholar] D. T. Suzuki was prepared to say that [Blavatsky’s] explication of
Buddhist teachings in The Voice of
Silence ... testified to an initiation into “the deeper side of Mahayana
doctrine” (Oldmeadow, 2004).
Perhaps. And yet—
W. E. Coleman has shown that
[Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled] comprises
a sustained and frequent plagiarism of about one hundred contemporary texts,
chiefly relating to ancient and exotic religions, demonology, Freemasonry and
the case for spiritualism....
[The Secret Doctrine] betrayed her
plagiarism again but now her sources were mainly contemporary works on Hindu-
ism and modern science (Goodrick-Clarke, 2004).
Interestingly,
when Blavatsky and her co-founder, Colonel Henry Olcott, sailed to India in
1879, the man whom they left in charge of the Theosophical Society in America
was one Abner Dou- bleday, the inventor of baseball (Fields, 1992).
Blavatsky
herself taught the existence of a hierarchy of “As- cended Masters,” included
among them one Lord Maitreya, the World Teacher whose incarnations had
allegedly included both Krishna and Jesus. Those same Masters, however, were
modeled on real figures
from public life,
e.g., on individuals involved in East Indian political reform (Vernon,
2001). They were fraudulently contacted in other ways as well:
[Blavatsky’s housekeeper, Emma
Cutting, demonstrated] how she and HPB had made a doll together, which they ...
manipulated on a long bamboo pole in semi-darkness to pro- vide the Master’s alleged apparitions. Emma had also
dropped “precipitated” letters on to
Theosophical heads from holes in the ceiling, while her husband had made
sliding panels and hidden entrances into the shrine room [adjoining HPB’s
bedroom] to facilitate Blavatsky’s comings and goings and make possible the substitution of all the brooches, dishes and other objects that she used in
her demonstrations [i.e., as
purported materializations or “apports”]....
The Russian
journalist V. S. Solovieff claimed to have caught [Blavatsky] red-handed with
the silver bells which produced astral music [in séances]. Blavatsky confessed to
Solovieff quite bluntly that the
phenomena were fraudulent, adding that one must deceive men in order to rule
them (Washington, 1995).
Madame
Blavatsky died in 1891. Prior to that passing, how- ever, Leadbeater had
already begun claiming to channel messages himself, from Blavatsky’s fabricated
“Masters.”
The famously
clairvoyant Leadbeater, further,
had before (and after) been accused of indecent
behavior toward a series of adoles- cent males:
One of Leadbeater’s favorite boys
[accused him] of secretly teaching boys to masturbate under cover of occult
training, and insinuat[ed] that masturbation was only the prelude to the
gratifying of homosexual lust (Washington, 1995).
In any case,
the young “Krishna on the Beach” was no typical teenager, in need of such
mundane lessons, as the clairvoyant well noted. Indeed, upon examining his aura,
Leadbeater found Krish- namurti to be a highly refined soul, apparently
completely free of selfishness, i.e., ego.
Krishnamurti
was soon thereafter declared by Leadbeater to be the current “vehicle” for Lord
Maitreya, and schooled accord- ingly within the Theosophical ranks. (An
American boy had earlier been advanced for the same position by Leadbeater, but
the latter appears to have “changed his mind” in that regard. Later, Lead-
beater was to propose yet another East
Indian youth for the title of World
Teacher. That boy, Rajagopal, went on to manage Krishna- murti’s financial
affairs, while his wife handled Jiddu’s other af- fairs, as we shall see.)
The brothers [i.e., Krishnamurti and
his younger sibling] no doubt found Leadbeater’s swings of temperament confusing.
One moment they would be adored,
pampered, idolized, and the next scolded for breaching some piece of esoteric
eti- quette they did not understand (Vernon, 2001).
Throughout this book, we shall see many examples
of students and disciples
being placed in comparable situations by their teach- ers and guru-figures. In
such psychological binds, persons for whom
it is vitally important to earn the approval of their “master” are rather
unable to discern how to gain that reward, with often- tragic results. There
are, indeed, two possible extreme reactions to such intermittent
reward/punishment, where one cannot ascertain the conditions by which the
reward will be earned or the punish- ment given. That is, one can either simply
drop all of one’s reac- tions and live in “choiceless awareness” of the moment;
or, more often, evolve that impossibility of “guessing right” into neuroses,
violence or extreme depression.
Indeed,
relevant experiments have been done by students of Pavlov himself (Winn, 2000),
wherein dogs were first taught, via reward and punishment, to distinguish
between circles and ellip- ses. Then, the circles were gradually flattened, and
the ellipses made rounder, until the experimental subjects could no longer dis-
tinguish between them. The dogs were thus unable to give the “correct response”
to earn a corresponding prize, instead being re- warded and punished
“randomly.” The effect on the animals was that initially happy and excitable
dogs became violent, biting their experimenters. Other previously “laid back,
carefree” animals, by contrast, became lethargic, not caring about anything.
At any rate,
even prior to being discovered by Leadbeater, while still in India’s
public school system,
Krishnamurti’s own edu- cation had been a traumatic
experience:
Never one to endear himself to
schoolmasters, Krishna was punished brutally
for his inadequacies and
branded an imbe- cile (Vernon, 2001).
He was caned almost every day for
being unable to learn his lessons. Half his time at school was spent in tears
on the ve- randa (Lutyens, 1975).
Not
surprisingly, then, in later years Krishnamurti evinced little regard for
academic accomplishments:
[The Nobel-caliber physicist David
Bohm] spoke of the hu- miliation he had experienced at the hands of
Krishnamurti who, in his presence, made cutting jokes about “professors” and
did not acknowledge the importance of Bohm’s work....
He suffered greatly under [Krishnamurti’s] disrespect of him, which at times was blatantly
obvious (Peat, 1997).
* * *
Krishnamurti’s contemporary
appearance on Earth offered hope to Theosophists for the “salvation of
mankind.” After years of being groomed for his role as their World Teacher,
however, Krishna- murti’s faith in the protection of Theosophy’s Masters, and
Lead- beater’s guiding visions of the same, was shattered in 1925 by the
unexpected death of his own younger brother. (Jiddu had previ- ously been
assured, in his own believed meetings with the Masters on the astral plane,
that his brother would survive the relevant illness.) Thereafter, he viewed
those visions, including his own, as being merely personal wish-fulfillments,
and considered the occult hierarchy of Masters to be irrelevant (Vernon, 2001).
That, however,
did not imply any rejection of mysticism in general, on Krishnamurti’s part:
By
the autumn of 1926 [following an alleged kundalini
awak- ening which began in 1922] Krishna made it clear ... that a
metamorphosis had taken place. [The kundalini is a subtle energy believed to
reside at the base of the spine. When “awakened” and directed up the spine into
the brain, it pro- duces ecstatic spiritual realization.] His former
personality had been stripped away, leaving him in a state of constant and
irreversible union with the godhead (Vernon, 2001).
Or, as
Krishnamurti (1969) himself put it, in openly proclaim- ing his status as World
Teacher:
I have become one with the Beloved.
I have been made sim- ple. I have become glorified because of Him.
[Krishnamurti] maintained that his
consciousness was merged with his beloved, by which he meant all of creation
(Sloss, 2000).
In August of
1929, reasoning that organizations inherently condition and restrict Truth, the thirty-four-year-old Krishnamurti
formally dissolved the Theosophical
Society’s “Order of the Star” branch, which he had previously headed since
1911.
Even there, however, it was more the organization and its “As- cended Master”-based philosophy,
rather than his own role as World Teacher or Messiah, that was being
repudiated. Krishna- murti himself explained as much after the dissolution:
When it becomes necessary for
humanity to receive in a new form the ancient wisdom, someone whose duty it is
to repeat these truths is incarnated (in Michel, 1992).
Or, as Vernon
(2001) confirmed:
[Krishnamurti] never went as far as
to deny being the World Teacher, just that it made no difference who or what he
was.
In 1932,
Krishnamurti and Rajagopal’s wife began an affair which would last for more
than twenty-five years. The woman, Rosalind, became pregnant on several
occasions, suffering miscar- riages and at least two covert/illegal abortions.
The oddity of that relationship is not lessened by Jiddu’s earlier regard for
the same woman. For, both he and his brother believed that Rosalind was the
reincarnation of their long-lost mother ... in spite of the fact that the
latter had only died two years after Rosalind
was born (Sloss, 2000).
In the late
1930s, Krishnamurti retired to Ojai, California, be- coming close friends with
Aldous Huxley. Being thus affectionate, however, did not stop Jiddu from
insultingly regarding Huxley, behind his back, as having a mind “like a
wastebasket” (Sloss, 2000). Huxley in turn, after hearing Krishnamurti speak in
Swit- zerland in 1961, wrote of that lecture: “It was like listening to a
discourse of the Buddha” (in Peat, 1997). Further, when Aldous’ house and library were lost in a fire, Krishnamurti’s Commentaries
on Living were the first of the books he replaced.
“Wastebasket,” indeed.
With his
proximity to northern Los Angeles, Jiddu also visited with composer Igor
Stravinsky, writer Thomas Mann and philoso- pher-mathematician Bertrand
Russell, and picnicked with screen legends Greta Garbo and Charlie Chaplin.
The continuing
affair with Rosalind was, not surprisingly, less than completely in line with
the quasi-Messiah’s own teachings:
Krishnamurti had occasionally told
young people that celi- bacy was significant, indicating that it encouraged the
gen- eration of great energy and intensity that could lead to psy- chological
transformation. Krishnamurti seems to have raised the matter with [David] Bohm
as well, and the physi- cist believed that the Indian teacher led a celibate
life (Peat, 1997).
Bohm first met
Krishnamurti in 1961, and went on to become easily the most famous of his
followers (until their distancing from each other in 1984), co-authoring
several books of dialogs on spiri- tual topics with Jiddu. Bohm further sat as
a trustee on the board of a Krishnamurti-founded school in England, and was
viewed by many as potentially being the Krinsh’s “successor.”
Consequently,
apologetic protests that Krishnamurti’s behav- ior with Rosalind was “not
dishonest/hypocritical,” simply for him not having spent his entire life preaching
the benefits of celibacy or marriage, ring hollow. On the contrary,
if we are to believe Peat’s report that Krishnamurti “had spoken to Bohm of the
importance of celibacy,” there
absolutely was a contradiction
between Krish- namurti’s teachings and his life. That is so even though the
quar- ter-century affair with Rosalind, hidden for whatever reasons, had ended
by the time he met Bohm.
Given that, the
only possible verdict regarding Krishnamurti’s behavior is that of obvious
hypocrisy.
* * *
Considering Krishnamurti’s own
abusive schooling, it is hardly surprising that he should have perpetuated that
same cycle on his students, under the pretense of deliberately creating crises
to pro- mote change and growth in them:
The gopis
[early, young female disciples of Krishnamurti, by analogy with the followers
of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita] would seek out private interviews with him,
during which he mercilessly tore down their defenses and laid naked their
faults, invariably ending with the girls crying their hearts out, but feeling
it must be for the best (Vernon, 2001).
Even many years
later, employing the same “skillful/cruel means” of awakening others,
Krishnamurti confronted Bohm in a
way that others later described as “brutal” (Peat, 1997).
As we shall
see, that is a common problem among the world’s spiritual paths for disciples
who have endured their own guru- figures’ harsh discipline, and have then
assumed license to treat others in the same lousy way as they themselves had
been treated. The excuse there is, of course, always that such mistreatment is for
the “spiritual benefit” of those others, even in contexts where that claim
could not possibly be true.
Quarrels due to what Raja[gopal]
remembers as Krishna’s frequent lying and undercutting of him, Krishna’s
agreeing to proposals behind Raja’s
back, and making promises that could not be kept, became so severe after
several months in South America that once Krishna, who could only take so much
criticism, slapped Raja. This was not the only time that would happen, but it was the first (Sloss, 2000).
Krishnamurti lacked ordinary human
compassion and kind- ness; he was intolerant, even contemptuous, of those who
could not rise to his own high plane (Vernon, 2001).
“Born with a heart two sizes too small,” etc.
At least one of
Jiddu’s early “gopis,” however, saw through his clumsy, “cruel to be kind”
attempts at spiritual discipline:
These supposedly privileged and beneficial sessions
consisted of Krishna repeatedly pointing out well-known faults and
picking on everything detrimental and sapping one’s confi- dence (Lutyens,
1972).
On at least one
occasion, Krishnamurti was likewise inadver- tently overheard making
unprovoked, uncomplimentary remarks about others ... in his bedroom, with the
married Rosalind (Sloss, 2000).
Neither
Rajagopal nor Rosalind were ever devotees of Krish- namurti. Nor was David
Bohm, whose own response to Krishna- murti’s (unsolicited) harsh public
discipline—in a context where they were supposed to be in a dialog, not a
guru-disciple relation- ship, by Jiddu’s own explicit rejection of the
latter—was beyond tragic:
[T]he physicist was thrown into
despair. Unable to sleep, ob- sessed with thoughts, he constantly paced the
room to the point where he thought of suicide. At one point he believed that he
could feel the neurotransmitters firing in his brain.... His despair soon
reached the point where he was placed on antidepressants....
He once wrote
to [Fritz Wilhelm] that he thought that his chest pains were a result of K’s
[i.e., Krishnamurti’s] misbehaving towards him. “This problem with K is
literally crushing me” (Peat, 1997).
* * *
Krishnamurti continued to lecture
and discipline until his passing in 1986. In those activities, he gradually
mutated his teaching style from that
of a savior pronouncing cosmic truths to that of a personal counselor, focusing
the content of those lectures on the split in consciousness between subject and
object:
When man becomes aware of the
movement of his own con- sciousness he will see the division between the
thinker and the thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the
experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is
there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past. This
timeless insight brings about a deep radical change in the mind (Krishnamurti,
in [Lutyens, 1983]).
Through that
personal realization, Krishnamurti claimed (completely untenably) to be
unconditioned by his own upbringing and, indeed, to have (conveniently)
“forgotten” most of his past. Nevertheless, his own teachings have much in
common with those of both the Buddha and the Upanishads. Not coincidentally,
Jiddu had been intensively schooled in both of those philosophies during his
early years at Adyar (Sloss, 2000).
In line with
his stultifying ideas on the nature of thought and knowledge, Krishnamurti further gave no instruction in structural/
content techniques of meditation. Instead, he taught and practiced the
meditative exercise as “a movement without any motive, with- out words and the
activity of thought.”
[R]epeating mantras and following
gurus were, he said, par- ticularly stupid ways of wasting time (Peat, 1997).
And the Krinsh,
with his krinsh-feet quite warm in Ojai,
Said, “Be independent, meditate my way!
Be free without gurus! Be free without
mantras!
Be free without beliefs,
intentions or tantras!”
Jiddu himself,
however, was a guru in everything but name. The authoritarian pronouncements,
intolerance for disagreement, and grandiosity could have come from any of the
other “enlight- ened” individuals with whom we shall soon become too familiar.
Though Krishnamurti himself was “allergic” to the guru-disciple relationship,
“if it looks like a guru, talks like a guru and acts like a guru.
”
After so many years surrounded by an
inner circle, like a monarch attended by his courtiers who adored him and be-
lieved he could do no wrong, he had grown unused to being contradicted (Vernon,
2001).
[E]ven as he was insisting on the
vital importance of indi- vidual discovery, the transcripts of his
conversations with pupils [at his schools] reveal a man who mercilessly bullied
his interlocutors into accepting his point of view (Washing-
ton, 1995).
Krishnamurti isolated himself from
criticism and feedback, “just like everybody he was criticizing,” [Joel] Kramer
[co- author of The Guru Papers] said,
and had to have “the last word on everything” (Horgan,
1999).
Even as he lay
on his deathbed, wasting away from pancreatic cancer, Krishnamurti stated firmly
that “while he was alive he was still ‘the World Teacher’” (Vernon,
2001). (That terminal illness occurred in spite of his claimed possession of
laying-on-of-hands healing abilities, which proved equally ineffectual in his
own prior attempts at healing Bohm of his heart ailments.) Indeed, so enam-
ored was the Krinsh of his own teaching position in the world that he recorded
the following statement a mere ten days before his passing:
I don’t think people realize what
tremendous energy and in- telligence went through
this body. You won’t find another
body like this, or that supreme
intelligence operating in a
body for many hundred years. You won’t see it again (in Lutyens, 1988).
Krishnamurti is supposed to have said that he is even great- er
than Buddha or the Christ (in Sloss, 2000).
And what happened
then...? Well ... in Adyar they say
That the World Teacher’s head Grew three sizes that day!
Of course,
Krishnamurti’s dissolution of the Order of the Star is often naïvely taken as
indicating a profound humility on his part.
However, as we shall implicitly see with every one of the “sages” to follow, it
is only through extensive editing, in the selec- tive presentation of the “enlightened”
man’s speech and actions, that any of them begin to look so humble and holy.
As to what
Jiddu’s own legacy may be, beyond his voluminous and arid written and recorded
teachings, he essentially answered that question himself:
Shortly before his death the Indian
teacher had declared that no one had
ever truly understood his teaching; no one besides himself had experienced transformation (Peat, 1997).
That, too, is a
recurring problem with the “great guru-figures” of this world—in generally failing
to create even one disciple “as great as” themselves, in spite of their
“skillful” discipline. More pointedly, any lesser, non-World teacher who could
openly admit that not even one of his
students had ever “truly understood his teaching” might have begun to question
his own abilities in that regard. This World
Teacher, however, evidently was not “condi- tioned” by any such need for
self-evaluation.
Krishnamurti
exhibited a lifelong penchant for fine, tailored clothing. One can further
easily see clear vestiges, in his psychol- ogy, of the Indian caste system
under which he had grown up (Vernon, 2001). Indeed, that background influenced
him even to the point of his
insisting that used books from others be wiped be- fore his reading of them. In planning
for his own death, he had fur- ther actually left instructions for
the needed crematory oven to be thoroughly cleaned before his own use of it,
and for that cleanli- ness to be verified by one of his followers. Evidently, this was to
ensure that no one else’s “impure” ashes
would commingle with his own holy, brahmin-caste
remains.
We
should all be so “unconditioned” by our own “forgotten”
pasts, no?
[W]hen I interrogated Krishnamurti
himself about the whole World Mother affair [i.e., the Theosophical Society’s
short- lived programme for global spiritual upliftment under a cho- sen woman
after the “World Teacher” plans for Krishna- murti had fallen through], he
blurted out, “Oh, that was all cooked u—” before he caught himself in the realization
that he was admitting to a recollection of events in his early life which he
later came to deny he possessed (Sloss, 2000).
[Emily Lutyens] said she knew Krishna
was a congenital liar but
that she would nevertheless always adore him....
My mother asked him once why he lied
and he replied with astonishing
frankness, “Because of fear” (Sloss, 2000).
Krinsh was outraged. His voice
changed completely from a formal indifference to heated anger. It became almost
shrill.
“I have no ego!” he said. “Who do
you think you are, to talk to me like this?” (Sloss, 2000).
One day, history will reveal
everything; but the division in Krishnamurti himself will cast a very dark
shadow on all he has said or written. Because the first thing the readers will
say, is: “If he cannot live it, who can?” (in Sloss, 2000).
Then the Krinsh slowly took off his World Teacher hat “If my teaching,” he thought, “falls down too often flat.... Maybe teaching ... perhaps ... is
not what I’m good at.”
CHAPTER VI
ZEN IN THE ART OF SEX AND VIOLENCE
The Zen tradition has a history of
famous drunken poets and masters.... Public encouragement for drinking in
several communities where the teacher was alcoholic has led many students to
follow suit, and certain Buddhist and Hindu communities have needed to start AA
groups to begin to deal with their addiction problems....
Students who
enter spiritual communities do not imag- ine they will encounter these kinds of
difficulties (Kornfield, 1993).
[I]t became known that Maezumi
[roshi/guru of the Zen Cen- ter in Los Angeles] had had a number of affairs
with female students and had also entered a dry-out clinic for alcoholics
(Rawlinson, 1997).
In 1975 and 1979, as well as later
in 1982, the Zen Studies Society had been rocked by rumors of Eido Roshi’s
alleged sexual liaisons with female students....
Nor were the
allegations limited to sexual misconduct. They spread to financial
mismanagement and incorrect be- havior (Tworkov, 1994).
38
ZEN BUDDHISM HAS BEEN WIDELY POPULARIZED in the West
through the writings of individuals
such as Alan Watts and D. T. Suzuki, not to mention Philip Kapleau’s The Three Pillars of Zen and Eugen
Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery. As
means toward enlightenment, it predominantly utilizes zazen meditation—sitting
and counting/watching one’s breath—and koans such as “What is the sound of one
hand clapping?” Its Rinzai sect in particular fur- ther employs behaviors intended
to shock disciples out of their
nor- mal state into enlightened awareness, and to aid in the “death of
the ego” of the student—for which they also utilize “the stick”:
Zen teachers have an excellent
method of dealing with stu- dents who start comparing themselves to Buddha or
God [af- ter their early enlightenment experiences, says Ken Wilber]. “They
take the stick and beat the crap out of you. And after five or ten years of
that, you finally get over yourself” (Hor- gan,
2003a).
That, however,
is simply a ludicrously romanticized version of physical abuse meted out in the
name of spirituality. In reality, such “crap-beating” behavior only shows the
tempers and tenden- cies toward violence of individuals who are naïvely viewed
by their followers as being spiritually enlightened.
Richard Rumbold, an English Zen
enthusiast, who spent about five months at the Shokokuji, a monastery in Kyoto,
describes some savage beatings-up administered by the head monk and his
assistant for trifling disciplinary offences (Koestler, 1960).
Such brutal
discipline could, further, easily get completely out of hand. Indeed, as a true
story told to Janwillem van de Wetering (1999)
during his long-term stay at a Japanese Zen monastery in Kyoto in the early
1970s goes:
In Tokyo there are some Zen
monasteries as well. In one of these monasteries ... there was a Zen monk who
happened to be very conceited. He refused to listen to whatever the mas- ter
was trying to tell him and used the early morning inter- views with the master to air all his pet theories. The masters have a special stick for this type of pupil. Our
master has one, too, you will have seen it, a short thick stick. One morn-
ing
the master hit the monk so hard that the monk didn’t
get up any more. He couldn’t, because he was dead....
The head monk
reported the incident to the police, but the master was never charged. Even the
police know that there is an extraordinary relationship between master and
pupil, a relationship outside the law.
Likewise, at a Buddhist repentance ceremony,
two young monks nodded off. After
the ceremony, Dokujiki followed them back to the sodo, the monks’ hall. Screaming
in rage, Dokujiki grabbed the kyosaku
[stick] and went after the young monks.... Dokujiki repeatedly pounded the
two terrified fledglings with the thick winter stick. Since Doku-
jiki was in a position of authority,
nobody said a word to him about his transgressions....
“Some people would
tell you that this is a tough form of Buddhist compassion,” said Norman, “but
it has nothing to do with Buddhism or
compassion. It’s a perversity that should be rejected....
“Even the stick
should be dropped. The stick and this stupid macho attitude” (Chadwick, 1994).
Indeed, as far
as “stupid macho attitudes” go, it would be diffi- cult to top the celebration
of Zen masters “beating the crap out of” their disciples. Yet ironically,
Wilber himself, quoted earlier in ex- actly that regard,
endorsed Chadwick’s above text, enthusiastically blurbing, “I love this
book!”
As Robert
Buswell (1992) further tells it, such
violence is ac- tually not at all foreign to Zen, even outside of the
purportedly valid discipline of its followers. For, during the fight between
celi- bates and householders for control of Buddhist monasteries in Ko- rea in
the 1950s, after the end of the Korean War, the celibate monks
sometimes resorted to physical force
to remove the married monks from the monasteries; indeed, older bhiksus [celibate monks] ... told many
stories of celibates ordaining young thugs off the streets to bring muscle to
their movement....
According to the main news organ of the celibates the
married monks submitted false
evidence in favor of their claims and illegally invaded temples that bhiksus had occu- pied, trying to retake
them.
Such behavior
would surely not have surprised Zen priest and scholar D. T. Suzuki, nor was it
inconsistent with the attitudes of “enlightened” Zen masters in general:
With his oft-pictured gentle and
sagacious appearance of later years, Suzuki is revered among many in the West
as a true man of Zen. Yet he wrote that “religion should, first of all, seek to
preserve the existence of the state,” followed by the assertion that the Chinese were “unruly heathens”
whom Japan should punish “in the name of the religion.” Zen mas- ter
Harada Sogaku, highly praised in the English writings of Philip Kapleau,
Maezumi Taizan, and others, was also quoted
by Hakugen [a Rinzai Zen priest and scholar teaching at Hanazono University in Kyoto].
In 1939 he wrote: “[If or- dered to] march: tramp, tramp, or shoot: bang, bang.
This is the manifestation of the highest Wisdom [of Enlightenment]. The unity of Zen and war of which I speak extends to the far- thest reaches of the holy war [now
under way]” (Victoria, 1997).
Daizen
Victoria, quoted immediately above, is himself no un- sympathetic outsider, but
is rather a practicing Soto Zen Buddhist priest.
As Suzuki’s own
“fully enlightened Zen master,” Soen/Soyen/ So-on—who had earlier attended the
1893 Parliament of Religions (Fields, 1992)—put it:
[A]s a means of bringing into
harmony those things which are incompatible,
killing and war are necessary (in Victoria, 1997).
The Rinzai Zen
master Nantembo (1839 – 1925) would cer- tainly have agreed:
There is no bodhisattva practice
superior to the compassion- ate taking of life (in Victoria,
2003).
Likewise for
the sagely Omori Sogen, “lauded as the ‘greatest Zen master of modern times,’
whose very life is ‘worthy to be con- sidered a masterpiece of Zen art’”:
Instead of a master concerned with
the “life-giving sword” ... of Zen, we encounter someone who from the 1920s
took an active part in the ultra-right’s agenda to eliminate parlia-
mentary democracy through political
assassination at home and promote Japan’s imperialist aims abroad. In short, a
man willing to kill all who stood in the way of his political agenda, yet claiming the enlightenment of the Buddha
as his own....
Hosokawa Dogen
writes: “The life of Omori Roshi is the manifestation of traditional and true
Zen” (Victoria, 2003).
Of Philip
Kapleau’s guru, the Yasutani Haku’un immortalized in The Three Pillars of Zen but regarded by some historians since then
as being “no less a fanatical militarist” than his own master, Daizen Victoria
(2003) opines:
Hakugen should
have written: “Yasutani was an even more fanatical
militarist, not to mention ethnic chauvinist, sexist, and anti-Semite, than his
master!”
Not until 2001
did any of the branches of Rinzai Zen admit or apologize for their zealous
support of Japanese militarism (in WWII and otherwise), in equating that
militarism with “Buddha Dharma” (Victoria, 2003).
[D]uring the war leading Zen masters
and scholars claimed, among other things, that killing Chinese was an
expression of Buddhist compassion designed to rid the latter of their
“defilements” (Victoria, 2003).
Zen has further
long embraced, even prior to its introduction
to Japan in the twelfth century, the idea that enlightened beings
transcend good and evil.
One Zen master told me that the
moral precepts were very important for students to follow, but, of course, Zen
masters didn’t need to bother with them since they were “free.” You can imagine
what troubles later visited that community (Kornfield,
1993).
And yet, such
contemporary attitudes as Kornfield describes are simply “pure Zen,” as it has
been practiced in the East for over a thousand years. We can and should
question such nonsense, but in doing so we are not returning Zen to its
original/traditional form. Rather, we
are adapting the accepted way of doing things for our modern times. One cannot, after
all, assert on the one hand
that “enlightened beings are no
longer subject to the moral con- straints enjoined by the Buddhist precepts on
the unenlightened,” and then turn around and profess surprise when “troubles”
visit not merely their transplants into the West but their own tradi- tional communities in the East!
Quite obviously, any such “tran- scendence of moral constraints” would render
the particular sur- rounding social rules irrelevant: If one is not bound by
laws, it doesn’t matter whether those same laws are strict or lax when ap-
plied to others. Put another way: It doesn’t matter what the speed limit is, or
how fast you were going, if you’ve got diplomatic immu- nity from prosecution
for breaking laws which apply to others but not to you.
The scandals, often of a sexual
nature, that have rocked a number of American Zen (and other Buddhist) centers
in re- cent years may seem a world apart from Zen-supported Japanese
militarism. The difference, however, may not be as great as it first appears,
for I suggest the common factor is Zen’s long-standing and self-serving lack of
interest in, or commitment to, Buddhism’s ethical precepts (Victoria, 2003).
Again, that
unflattering but unusually insightful observation comes from an ordained Zen priest.
Interestingly,
albeit for completely different reasons, neither van de Wetering nor Buswell
(who spent five years as a Zen monk in Korea) speak positively of the work of
either D. T. Suzuki or Kapleau. Rather, those writings on Zen, they
respectively indicate, misrepresent how it is actually practiced in
contemporary Asia:
[Modern Zen] monks in Korea train
within an extensive web of religious thought
and practice These
monks know that
while Zen masters teach sudden
enlightenment, they follow in their daily practice a rigidly scheduled regimen
of train- ing. They know that while Zen texts claim to eschew doc- trinal understanding, monks are expected
first to gain a solid grounding in Buddhist texts before
starting meditation prac- tice....
The vision of
Zen presented in much Western scholar- ship distorts the quality of Zen
religious experience as it is lived by its own adherents (Buswell, 1992).
As to the
actual life and mindset of Zen monks in Asia, then, when seeking entrance to a
monastery as a trainee the prospective monk will first prostrate himself at the
gate for hours or days.
When asked why he wishes to enter
the monastery, the monk should reply,
“I know nothing. Please accept my re- quest!” indicating that his mind is like
a blank sheet of pa- per, ready to be inscribed by his superiors as they wish.
If a monk fails to give the proper answer, he is struck repeatedly with the kyosaku until his shoulders are black
and blue and the desired state of mind is achieved (Victoria, 1997).
Having been
accepted into the community with that “desired state of mind,” even monks who
were admitted just hours earlier will exercise authority over the neophyte,
preceding him at meals and on other semiformal or formal occasions.
Those senior monks who have been in
training for more than one or two years seem, to the new entrant, to be
superior be- ings (Victoria, 1997).
* * *
What, then, of the widespread enlightenment which one might
idealistically wish to attribute to practitioners of Zen?
I
once asked Katagiri
Roshi, with whom I had my first
break- through ... how many truly great Ch’an and Zen masters there have
historically been. Without hesitating, he said, “Maybe one thousand
altogether.” I asked another Zen mas- ter how many truly enlightened—deeply
enlightened—Japa- nese Zen masters there were alive today, and he said, “Not
more than a dozen” (Wilber, 2000a).
Thus, we have
over a millennium of Zen teachers “beating the crap out of” their numerous
disciples on a regular basis, to gener- ate a scant thousand (i.e., around one
per year, globally) “enlight- ened” individuals. That, however, would never be
a reasonable trade-off, via any “calculus of suffering.” That is so
particularly since such enlightenment primarily benefits only the specific
indi- vidual “blessed” by it, not the world at large.
Be that as it
may, the “death of the ego” in enlightenment re- mains a strong motivation for
meditators, in Zen and elsewhere.
[One] of the marks of the meditation monk [as opposed
to the monastery administrators, etc.] is to wear old clothes covered with layer upon layer of patches.
While such garments are supposed to show his detachment from material
possessions, they more often serve as a kind of monastic status symbol. On
several occasions I even knew a monk new to the medita- tion hall to trade a
brand-new set of polyester robes for old patchwork clothes. During their free
time, the meditation monks can often be found adding still more patches to
their raiments (Buswell, 1992).
More accurately, then, the death
of other people’s egos
remains a strong motivating factor for meditators everywhere, with the
lev- erage of their respected power both acting
to effect that, and aiding in the indulgence of their own
desires.
Mo-san’s trap turned out to be his very “noncaring diligence”
.... I heard that, some ten years later, he became a substitute master in an American Zen temple on the West Coast.
Dur- ing his tenure he hid his
shortness by wearing platform soles under lengthened robes and insisted
that his lay disciples buy him a Cadillac to glide about in. He evoked a
scandal by trying to trade insights for intimate encounters with tall blondes (van de Wetering, 2001).
Or, expressed in haiku:
Tall blonde, high heels, wow! Is
that a lengthened silk robe? Happy to see you
We should
hardly be surprised that relocating stick-wielding “Eastern truths” into the
materialistic and unconstrained West would result in a dilution of their
transformative value. But in their native, sacred East?
Despite the disastrous problems
most of his students had en-
countered trying to study Zen in Japan, [Shunryu] Suzuki
[of the San Francisco Zen Center, author of the million-selling Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind] continued to
explore the possi- bility. Suzuki had ordained [a] couple before they went to
Japan. The wife did fine at a
nunnery, but her husband was forcibly sedated and shipped out of [the Soto
headquarters, mountain monastery at] Eiheiji. A woman from Zen Center
had such horrible experiences in
Japanese temples that she rejected Buddhism entirely, bought a wig, and moved
to L.A. (Chadwick, 1999).
The “Little
Suzuki” himself founded the world’s first Buddhist monastery outside of Asia,
at Tassajara hot springs—located three hours southeast of San Francisco—in
1966. The list of visitors and close associates to the San Francisco Zen Center
(SFZC) and Tas- sajara predictably reads like a “Who’s Who” of American
Buddhist (real and wanna-be) spirituality: Alan Watts, beat poet Allen Gins-
berg and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gary Snyder. Also, translator Thomas
Cleary, social economist E. F. Schumacher, and Stewart Brand (co-founder of the
Whole Earth Catalog). Plus Robert
Thur- man, the Harvard-graduated scholarly father of Hollywood- goddess Uma and
the self-proclaimed “first hippie in Asia,” who was ordained as the first
American Tibetan Buddhist monk by the Dalai Lama himself. Additionally, Joan
Baez, Mick Jagger, and Earl McGrath, the (former) head of Rolling Stone
Records. Also, anthropologist Gregory Bateson, former California governor and
1992 U.S. presidential candidate Jerry Brown, and numerous other recipients of (seriously)
autographed fruitcakes later pre- sented by Suzuki’s successor, Richard Baker.
For, before
passing away in 1971, Suzuki-roshi had named Baker as his sole American “dharma
heir,” or recipient of the Bud- dhist “transmission” from guru to disciple.
(Baker, for his own part, had earlier
organized the first major LSD conference in the United States, in 1966.)
“[What] does transmission mean?” I asked Suzuki. “Does it
mean that Richard Baker is perfectly
enlightened, and that his mind is the same as the mind of Buddha? Is his under-
standing complete?”
“Oh, no no no,”
Suzuki said. “Don’t make too much of it. It means he has a good understanding.
A good understand- ing and a complete commitment”....
[I]t was the
equivalent of getting a teacher’s certificate. Suzuki had said in lectures,
“Transmission is nothing spe- cial,” or “Actually, there is nothing to
transmit” (Chadwick, 1999).
Baker himself,
however, apparently evinced a somewhat more self-flattering understanding as to the significance of his own spiri-
tual inheritance:
Transmission happens outside the
limits of identity and ego. The fact that an acknowledged master acknowledges you as a Zen master means “you are no longer
a Buddhist; what you do is Buddhism” (Downing, 2001;
italics added).
And what, then, “is Buddhism”?
As abbot of San Francisco Zen
Center, between the abbot’s budget and use of community-owned residences and
re- sources, [Baker] lived in a style that he estimates could be duplicated by
a private citizen with an annual salary of close to half a million dollars a
year (Tworkov, 1994).
Discipline
under the transmitted “Frisco Zen master” then re- portedly (Downing, 2001)
included:
·
Baker dictating to his followers as to whom they could or couldn’t
be involved with in sexual relationships
·
The master having his followers “stand in rows and bow as he drove
away from Tassajara” in a “fantastic to drive” BMW, thereby causing himself to
be viewed by at least one of those bowing disciples as the “Richard Nixon of
Zen”
·
Ostensibly “lifetime” members of the Tassajara Board of Directors
involuntarily “going on sabbatical” when not be- ing sufficiently supportive of
Baker’s wishes
“What Baker transmitted,” said a
senior priest, “was power and arrogance and an attitude that ‘I have it and you
don’t’” (Tworkov, 1994).
At the San Francisco Zen Center, the
problems that came to a head in 1983 [involved] a number of master-disciple
sexual affairs, as well as a complex pattern
of alleged misuses
of au- thority and charisma,
both psychologically and financially (Anthony, et al., 1987).
More
specifically, the Harvard-educated, married Baker “was forced to resign after
his affair with a married student was re- vealed” (Schwartz, 1996). The frantic
husband of the rich, lithe
blonde in question—whom Baker
reportedly claimed had seduced him (we
should all have such luck)—was a writer by the name of Paul Hawken.
He, in turn, was of upscale Smith
& Hawken garden tool (and more) catalog fame, and
had previously been seen within the community as being Richard’s best friend,
even being referred to thusly by Baker himself (Tworkov, 1994).
At least two
other women were reportedly cruelly discredited as being mentally unstable
by Richard following the termination of his alleged sexual
involvement with them (Downing, 2001).
After all that,
the author of The Tassajara Bread Book ex-
pressed his own opinion of Baker:
A friend of mine said it best: I
give thanks to Dick Baker every day for fucking up so incredibly well that it
gave me my life back, because I had
given it to him (in Downing, 2001).
Senior priests were testifying at
public meetings about phys- ical and psychological abuse Richard had
[allegedly] perpe- trated....
Richard’s close
friend and advisor, Esalen’s Michael Murphy, told Richard that “the whole
alternative movement was crippled by what happened at Zen Center” (Downing, 2001).
And yet, to the
present day, Baker reportedly insists:
The only scandalous thing that
happened at Zen Center is how I was treated (in Tworkov, 1994).
This lack of
comprehension about what it might mean to “cause no harm” to others, on the
part of unapologetic individuals laying claim to enlightenment, profound transmission
and grand bodhisattva vows, is something which we shall sadly meet consis-
tently throughout the following chapters. Worse, one regularly sees that persons whose lives have been shattered by their
guru- figures, who have then mustered the courage to speak out, are be- ing
dismissed and discredited as “crazy,” etc. Further, that is done in ways
indistinguishable from those in which secular victims of incest or rape are
treated, should they dare to come forward.
Baker’s own
process of recovery from the self-inflicted 1983 “Apocalypse” included
a letter from the Nobel
Peace Prize nominee,
Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh,
vouching for Baker’s sin- cerity of apology to the community. Also, a spurned
offer from the Dalai Lama for him to take refuge in northern India, and a trip
to Disneyland with singer Linda Ronstadt.
Getting ready for an evening out,
[Baker] rolls up his sleeves and says plaintively, “I didn’t dance enough when
I was at Zen Center. I should have danced more” (Tworkov, 1994).
Or, as Nero
himself could have put it, millennia ago, upon see- ing his own empire burn: “I
should have fiddled more.”
And how would
all of the discontent regarding Baker’s alleged behaviors have been handled in
the “traditional” Far East?
The treatment of individual students
was the purview of the teacher. This was the traditional model. Whatever hap- pened, you could say it was a
teaching (Downing, 2001; ital- ics added).
Further, following the 1983 “explosion,”
people came from Japan and tried to
tell us that if we were unhappy with the teacher, we should leave, and the
teacher should stay (Yvonne Rand, in [Downing, 2001]).
This pressure
to have the unhappy students leave and let the holy teacher stay, too, is very
relevant to the unsupportable idea that guru-disciple relationships have
“traditionally” worked. (The untenable claim implicit there is that in the
agrarian East, such relationships had “checks and balances” in place, which
purport- edly constrained the behaviors of their guru-figures in ways which are
absent in the West.) For, observations such as Rand’s, above, clearly show that
“traditional” societies have exercised far less
practical checks and balances on the behaviors of their gurus/
kings/emperors than does the modern and postmodern West.
I was taught in school [that the
Japanese emperor] was the [sic] god
and I believed till I was ten years old and the war [i.e., WWII] over....
We thought
Chinese inferior and whites were devils and only god, our god, could win the
war (in Chadwick, 1994).
Feudal society,
with unquestioning obedience to the guru-like, divine emperor—the “embodiment
of Supreme Truth”—actually existed in the “divine land” of Japan until the
midpoint of the twentieth century. For the effects of that on the citizens,
reflected in past and present society and culture, consult Victoria’s (1997) Zen at War, Van Wolferen’s (1990) The Enigma of Japanese Power, and
Barry’s (1992) Dave Barry Does Japan.
Consider,
further, the private life of Gyokujun So-on, the Jap- anese teacher of the late
Shunryu Suzuki. Suzuki became a disci- ple of So-on in 1917, at age thirteen.
In those same years, So-on was carrying on an affair with the wife of a local
(Japanese) mer- chant.
[E]veryone knew about their relationship. No one did any-
thing to stop their trysts, but
there was general disapproval. It was a contributing factor to So-on’s loss of
students (Chad- wick, 1999).
Note that this
rule-breaking was met merely with a milque- toast “general disapproval,” not
with discipline or meaningful cen- sure or career impediments sufficient to cause it to stop. That is
so regardless of whatever one might propose the local cultural effect of such “general disapproval” to otherwise
be in terms of lost honor, etc. In
that behavior, further, So-on was merely carrying on a long-standing
“tradition” himself:
In the Edo Era [1600 – 1868],
Buddhist priests did not mar- ry, but temples were busy places, and the priests
in many cases were somewhat worldly. Women began living in the temples, to work
and, at times, to love. They did not show their faces because they weren’t supposed to be there to begin
with (Chadwick, 1999; italics added).
Otori [1814 – 1904] recognized that
a large number of Bud- dhist priests were already married, in spite of regulations prohibiting it (Victoria, 1997; italics
added).
[I]n Zen monasteries in Japan............................ sex between men has long
been both a common practice and a prohibited activity
(Downing, 2001; italics
added).
[A]t the same time every evening,
there was the faint smell of smoke from the dark graveyard. It wasn’t until
the third
or fourth day that I realized that
the monks weren’t piously lighting joss sticks for the old masters’ graves at
all; they were sneaking a quick forbidden
[italics added] cigarette in the shadows of the mossy tombstones....
No one was
around when I left the sodo, but I
thought I heard the sound of female laughter from within the labyrinth
of thin-walled rooms, and I couldn’t help wondering what other rules might be
relaxed when the roshi was out of town.
I walked out
through the terracotta courtyard, and as I passed the doghouse I saw that [the
dog’s] dish contained or- dinary mud-colored kibbles. This confirmed my
suspicion that the [prohibited in the
Buddhist diet] meat on the stove hadn’t been for the dog, at all (Boehm, 1996).
In accord with
such wholly unpunished, contemporary rule- breaking, Janwillem van de Wetering
(1999) relates his own ex- periences in
Kyoto:
I
noticed that the young monks had discovered ways to break the
rules of the monastery. When they put on a suit and a
cap
nobody would recognize
them, and I saw them climb over the wall at night.
“Whatever do
you do when you are over the wall?” I asked Han-san, the youngest monk, who had
become my friend.
“As long as you
don’t tell anyone,” Han-san said. “We go to the cinema, and sometimes to a pub
to have a little saké, but it’s
difficult because at 3:30 in the morning we have to visit the master and we
can’t be smelling of alcohol. And sometimes we go to the whores.”
Zen priests and
monks, unlike those in other branches of Bud- dhism (e.g., Theravada), are not
actually sworn to celibacy. Never- theless, the above clandestine activities,
even by non-enlightened individuals who cannot claim to have “transcended rules
of good and evil,” certainly constituted a breaking of the rules of the Asian
community/society. They further again suffered no associated pun- ishment from
the monastery leaders—who themselves would sure- ly have violated the same
rules in their younger days.
The point here
is obviously not that “rules are meant to be obeyed”—as Socrates would
evidently have it, in docilely accepting the unfair death-sentence handed to
him by the ancient tribunal (Askenasy, 1978), or in “just
following the orders”
of that authority.
Rather, the relevant point to take
from all of these examples is simply that the claim that spiritual aspirants
followed the rules in the agrarian East or otherwise in no way matches the
documented information. That, in turn, is wholly relevant to the “guru game,”
simply because the same belief is regularly used to support the false idea that
guru-disciple relationships worked in those con- texts, even if not functioning
properly in our own society and cul- ture.
Nor was it
necessary to go out seeking in order to find the en- joyments listed by van de
Wetering, above:
Girls threw rocks into the sodo’s courtyard with invitations
attached with red ribbons.... I once got a rock on my head (van de Wetering, 2001).
Wet night, a rock, ouch!
Her love trails in red ribbons
Falling from the sky
But far, far
away from such “enlightenment” ... where noble, revered masters and their
humble disciples chop wood, draw wa- ter, and have illicit sex ... the quiet,
spontaneous grace of a Zen archer, his performance broadcast on Dutch
television—
a Japanese archery-adept in robes,
bowing, kneeling, danc- ing, praying before he pulled his bow’s string ... and
had his arrow miss the target completely (van de
Wetering, 2001).
The young girls
throwing rocks over Kyoto monastery walls, however—their sweet offers of love
attached by soft red silk rib- bons—hit the bull’s eye every time.
CHAPTER VII
SEX, BLISS, AND ROCK ‘N’ ROLL
(SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA)
SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA
WAS THE FOUNDER of the Yogaville ashram in Buckingham County, Virginia—begun in
1979—and its satellite Integral Yoga institutes in New York, San Francisco and
else- where.
He was born in southern India
in 1914 and married young
but, after his wife’s death, left his children and embarked at age
twenty-eight on a full-time spiritual quest.
In 1949 he was
initiated as a swami by his own spiritual mas- ter, the renowned Swami
Sivananda, having searched the moun- tains and forests of India to find that
sage in Rishikesh. His mo- nastic name, Satchidananda, means
“Existence-Knowledge-Bliss.”
He came to New
York in 1966 as a guest of the psychedelic artist Peter Max.
Word soon
spread that Satchidananda had cured the kidney ailment of a disciple by
blessing a glass of water.
He spoke at
Woodstock in 1969, having been flown in via heli- copter to bless the historic
music festival:
53
I am very happy to see that we are
all gathered to create some “making” sounds, to find that peace and joy through the celestial music. I am honored for
having been given the opportunity of opening this great, great music festival
(Sat- chidananda, in [Wiener, 1972]).
Even prior to
Woodstock, Satchidananda had sold out Carne- gie Hall, being viewed as one of
the “class acts” in the spiritual marketplace.
His views on nutrition were solicited by the Pillsbury Corpora- tion.
By the
beginning of the 1970s, thousands of Integral Yoga devotees studied at fifteen
centers around the United States. By the late ’70s, Satchidananda’s (1977)
followers numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Included in that group have
been the health and diet expert Dr. Dean Ornish, model Lauren Hutton, Jeff “The Fly” Goldblum, and Carol “You’ve
Got a Friend” King, who donated Connecticut land to the yogi’s organization.
Having acquired
other, warmer property for Yogaville in Vir- ginia, Sivananda Hall was built
there, complete with a wooden throne for the guru, set atop a large stage at
one end of the hall. Life for the poorer “subjects” within that 600-acre
spiritual king- dom, however, was apparently less than regal:
The ritual abnegations of the sannyasin [monks] included a pledge to
“dedicate my entire life and renounce all the things which I call mine at the
feet of Sri Gurudev [i.e., Satchida- nanda]. This includes my body, mind,
emotions, intellect, and all the
material goods in my possession.” Though they weren’t expected to pay for
basics like food and lodging, they were relegated to rickety trailers sometimes
infested with mice or lice (Katz, 1992).
In the midst of
his followers’ reported poverty, Satchidananda himself nevertheless acquired an antique Cadillac
and a cherry red Rolls-Royce.
Further, and
somewhat oddly given Satchidananda’s Wood- stock background, in the ashram
itself
dozens of onetime children of rock
‘n’ roll sat down to make lists of “offensive” songs and television shows to be
banned within Yogaville’s borders.
Soon after, dating
between ash-
ram children was banned through the
end of high school. Then all children attending the ashram school were asked to
sign a document pledging that they would not date, have sexual contact, listen
to restricted music, or watch restricted television shows.
Satchidananda
never came forth to comment formally on
the new restrictions, but residents understood that the rules carried his
implied imprimatur (Katz, 1992).
With those
restrictions in place, an ashram member was soon reported for listening to a
Bruce Springsteen album.
Increasingly
oddly, given all that: Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer of the power-pop band
Weezer, spent much of his first ten years in Yogaville.
* * *
Some people take advantage of the
language in the tantric scriptures, “I’m going to teach you tantric yoga,” they
say. “Come sleep with me.” With a heavy heart I tell you that some so-called
gurus do this, and to them I say, “If you want to have sex, be open about it.
Say, ‘I love you, child, I love you, my devotee’”....
Yoga monks
automatically become celibate when they have a thirst to know the Absolute God,
and feel that in or- der to do so they must rise above the physical body and
the senses (Satchidananda, in [Mandelkorn, 1978]).
[T]he distinguishing mark of a Guru
is, as Sri Swamiji [i.e., Satchidananda] says, “complete mastery over his or
her body and mind, purity of heart, and total freedom from the bond- age of the
senses” (in Satchidananda, 1977).
The taking of
the monastic vows in which the title of “Swami” is conferred again inherently
includes a vow of celibacy. That seri- ous promise, however, may not have
stopped the “Woodstock Swami” from, as they say, “rocking out,” via Springsteen’s The Ris- ing or otherwise:
In 1991 numerous female followers
stated that he had used his role as their spiritual mentor to exploit them
sexually. After the allegations became public many devotees aban- doned
Satchidananda and hundreds of students left IYI schools, but the Swami never admitted
to any wrongdoing.
As a result, the Integral Yoga
organization diminished by more than 1/3. An organization called the Healing
Through the Truth Network was formed and at least eight other women came
forward with claims of sexual abuse (S. Cohen, 2002a).
[Susan Cohen claims that]
Satchidananda took advantage of her when she was a student from 1969 [when she
was eight- een] to 1977 (Associated Press, 1991).
Another follower, nineteen-year-old
Sylvia Shapiro, accom- panied the swami on a worldwide trip.
“In
Manila, he turned [his twice-daily massages from me] into
oral sex,” Ms. Shapiro said (Associated Press, 1991).
Until December [of 1990], Joy Zuckerman
was living at Yogaville, where she was known as Swami Krupaananda. She left
after a friend confided in her that Satchidananda had made sexual advances
toward her last summer, Ms. Zuc-
kerman said (McGehee, 1991).
* * *
A Guru is the one who has steady
wisdom ... one who has re- alized the Self. Having that realization, you become
so steady; you are never nervous. You will always be tranquil, nothing can
shake you (Satchidananda, 1977).
Satchidananda’s own driver, however,
recognized character- istics
other than such holy ones, in the swami:
After hours of sitting in traffic
jams observing his spiritual master in the rearview mirror, Harry had decided
that Sri Swami Satchidananda was not only far from serene, he was a bilious and unforgivingly cranky old
man. Not once had Harry felt his spiritual bond with Satchidananda enhanced by
all the carping, however edifyingly paternal it was meant to be (Katz, 1992).
As they say, “No man
is great in the eyes of his own valet.”
In describing how a “steady” man
would see the world, Satchi- dananda (1977) further quoted Krishna from the
Bhagavad Gita:
Men
of Self-knowledge look with equal
vision on a brahmana [i.e., a spiritual person]
imbued with learning and humility, a
cow, an elephant, a dog and an outcaste.
There is, however, always the contrast
between theory and practice:
Lorraine was standing beside one of [Satchidananda’s] Cadil- lacs ... when the beautiful model
[Lauren Hutton] and the guru came out and climbed inside. Satchidananda did not
acknowledge Lorraine’s presence except to glare at her and bark in his
irritated father voice, “Don’t slam the door”
(Katz, 1992).
* * *
Satchidananda passed away in August
of 2002. Before he died, he had this to say regarding the allegations of sexual
misconduct made against him:
“They know it is all false,”
[Satchidananda] had said about eight years ago [i.e., in 1991]. “I don’t know
why they are saying these things.
My life is an open book. There is nothing for me to hide” (S. Chopra, 1999).
Yogaville,
meanwhile, is still very much alive, albeit amid a more recently alleged “mind
control” scandal involving a univer- sity-age woman, Catherine Cheng (Extra, 1999).
CHAPTER VIII
THE SIXTH
BEATLE
(MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI)
Physicist John S. Hagelin ... has
predicted that Maharishi’s influence on history “will be far greater than that
of Einstein or Gandhi” (Gardner, 1996).
You could not meet with Maharishi
without recognizing in- stantly his integrity. You look in his eyes and there
it is (Buckminster Fuller, in [Forem, 1973]).
Maharishi’s entire movement revolves
around ... faith in his supposed omniscience (Scott, 1978).
BORN IN 1918, THE MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI graduated
with a
physics degree from the University
of Allahabad. Soon thereafter, he received the system of Transcendental Meditation® (TM®) from his “Guru Dev,” Swami
Brahmanand Saraswati, who occupied the “northern seat” of yoga in India, as one
of four yogic “popes” in the country. He practiced yoga for thirteen years
under Guru Dev, un- til the latter’s death in 1953. The Maharishi (“Great
Sage”) then traveled to London in 1959 to set up what was to become a branch
58
of the International Meditation
Society there, with the mission of spreading the teachings of TM.
Transcendental
Meditation itself is an instance of mantra yoga. The student mentally repeats a series of Sanskrit
words for a minimum of twenty
minutes every morning and evening. (Such mantras are reportedly selected on the
basis of the student’s age. And they don’t come cheaply.)
Maharishi was quick to discourage
other disciplines. “All these systems have been misinterpreted for the last
hun- dreds of years,” he said. “Don’t waste time with them. If you are
interested in hatha yoga, wait until I have time to re- interpret it. There is
no match for Transcendental Medita- tion either in principles or in practice in any field of knowl- edge” (Ebon,
1968; italics added).
The Maharishi
held high hopes, not merely for the spread of TM, but for its effects on the
world in general:
He told the New York audience, as he
had told innumerable others before in several around-the-world tours, that
adop- tion of his teachings by 10% or even 1% of the world’s popu- lation would
“be enough to neutralize the power of war for thousands of years” (Ebon, 1968).
The [TM] movement taught that the
enlightened man does not have to use critical thought, he lives in tune with
the “unbounded universal consciousness.” He makes no mis- takes, his life is
error free (Patrick L. Ryan, in [Langone, 1995]).
In the autumn
of 1967, His Holiness gave a lecture in London, which was attended by the
Beatles. Following that talk, the Fab Four—along with Mick Jagger and Marianne
Faithfull—accompa- nied the yogi on a train up to Bangor, North Wales, at his
invita- tion. Reaching the train platform in Bangor, they were mobbed by
hundreds of screaming fans, whom the Maharishi charmingly as- sumed were there
to see him.
Like Ravi Shankar before him, [the
Maharishi had] been un- aware of the group’s stature, but, armed with the
relevant records, he underwent a crash-course in their music and be- gan to illustrate his talks with quotes from their lyrics. Flat-
tered though they were, the Beatles
were unconvinced by his argument that, if they were sincere about meditation, they
ought to tithe a percentage of their income into his Swiss bank account.
Because they hadn’t actually said no, the Ma- harishi assured American
investors that the four would be co-starring
in a TV documentary about him (Clayson, 1996).
It
was reported that Maharishi’s fee for initiating the Beatles was one
week’s salary from each of them—a formidable sum (Klein and Klein, 1979).
In the middle
of February, 1968, John, Paul, George and Rin- go, with their respective wives
and girlfriends, arrived at the Ma- harishi’s Rishikesh meditation retreat in
India. They were joined there by Mike Love of the Beach Boys and “Mellow
Yellow” Dono- van, as well as by the newly Sinatra-less Mia Farrow and her
younger sister, Prudence. (The Doors and Bob Weir, guitarist for the Grateful
Dead, were also enthusiastic about TM, but did not participate in the Rishikesh
trip. More contemporary followers of the Maharishi have included actress
Heather Graham and the No- bel Prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson. Plus
Deepak Chopra [see TranceNet, 2004], whose
best-selling book Quantum Healing was
dedicated to the Maharishi. Also, at one time, Clint Eastwood and quarterback
Joe Namath.)
As Ringo himself
put it:
The four of us have had the most
hectic lives. We’ve got al- most everything money can buy, but of course that
just means nothing after a time. But we’ve found something now that really
fills the gap, and that is the Lord (in Giuliano, 1986).
The Beatles’
1968 stay in Rishikesh was originally scheduled to last for three months.
Predictably,
Ringo and his wife Maureen were the first to leave, after ten days, citing the
“holiday camp” atmosphere, the spiciness of the food, the excessive insects and
the stifling midday temperatures. Well, it was India, after all—what exactly did they expect, if not deathly spicy
cuisine, mosquitos, bedbugs and inter- minable heat? If they wanted bland food
and cool weather, they should have stayed in Liverpool, awash in bangers and
mash to “fill the gap.”
Paul McCartney
and Jane Asher bailed out a month later, pleading homesickness.
John and
Cynthia and George and Patti, however, persevered, with John and George writing
many songs which would later ap- pear on the White Album. Indeed, most of the thirty-plus songs on that disc
were composed in the Maharishi’s ashram. “Dear Pru- dence,” for one, was
written for Mia Farrow’s sister, who was so intent on spiritual advancement
that it was delegated to John and George to get her to “come out to play” after
her three weeks of meditative seclusion in her chalet.
The overall
calm there, however, was soon shattered by vari- ous suspicions:
[A]ccurately or not, they became
convinced that the Maha- rishi had distinctly worldly designs on one of their illustrious fellow students, actress Mia Farrow. They confronted him, in
an oblique way, with this accusation, and when he was un- able to answer it, or
even figure out precisely what it was, they headed back to London (Giuliano,
1986).
By Farrow’s own
(1997) recounting, that may have been just a
simple misunderstanding based on the Maharishi’s unsolicited hugging of her
after a private meditation session in his cave/cellar. Less explicable, though,
are reports of the same sage’s offering of chicken to at least one female
student within his otherwise- vegetarian ashram, in alleged attempts to curry
her favor (Clay- son, 1996).
The
Beatles’ disillusionment with the Maharishi
during their stay with him in
India in 1968 involved allegations that Ma- harishi had sex with a visiting American
student (Anthony, et al., 1987).
“Sexy Sadie”
was later composed
in honor of those believed
foi- bles on the part of His Holiness.
In any case,
within a week Mia Farrow, too, had left the ash- ram on a tiger hunt, never to
return (to Rishikesh).
[T]he Maharishi burst into the
Beatles’ lives, offering salva- tion with a price tag of only fifteen [sic] minutes
of devotion a day. “It seemed too good to be true,”
Paul McCartney later quipped. “I guess it was” (Giuliano,
1989).
The
Beatles ... parted with Maharishi in 1969 with the public comment that he was “addicted to
cash” (Klein and Klein, 1979).
John and Yoko,
interestingly, later came to believe that they were the reincarnations of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, respectively. (One of Yoko’s songs on their joint album Milk and Honey is titled, “Let Me Count
the Ways.”)
No word on who
Ringo might have been.
George soon became heavily involved
with the Hare Krishnas
—as one might have gathered from the
chorus to his “My Sweet Lord” single—although ultimately leaving them
completely out of his will. Indeed, at one point members of Hare Krishna were signed to Apple Records as the “Radha
Krishna Temple.” They re- leased at least one chanted single on that label,
which made it into the “Top 20” in September of 1969. The Krishnas’
Bhaktivedanta Manor headquarters in London, too, was actually a gift from Har-
rison—which he at one point threatened to transfer to Yogananda’s
Self-Realization Fellowship instead, when the Krishnas were not maintaining the
grounds to his satisfaction (Giuliano, 1989).
The
devotional/mantra yoga-based Hare Krishna movement itself is rooted in the
extremely patriarchal Vedic culture. It was brought to the United States in the
mid-1960s by the now-late Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada—who soon starred in a
San Francisco rock concert featuring the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Air- plane
and Janis Joplin. Prabhupada’s own guru was claimed to be an avatar. (George,
John and Yoko participated in an extended in- terview with Prabhupada in 1969, which was kept in
print in book- let form by the Krishna organization for many years
afterwards. Harrison also wrote the foreword for Prabhupada’s book, Krishna: The Supreme Personality of Godhead.)
Details along
the following lines as to the alleged horrendous goings-on within the Hare
Krishna community, including wide- spread claims of child sexual abuse, drug
dealing and weapons stockpiling, have long existed:
The founder of the institution, the
late Prabhupada, was al- legedly told about
the physical and sexual abuse of minors
in 1972, a time when he totally controlled the institution. The victims
allege he and others conspired to suppress the al- leged crimes, fearful that the public exposure would threaten
the viability of the movement (S. Das, 2003).
[After Prabhupada’s death] the Hare
Krishna movement de- generated into a number of competing [so-called] cults
that have known murder, the abuse of women and children, drug dealing, and
swindles that would impress a Mafia don (Hub- ner and Gruson, 1990).
The movement’s [post-Prabhupada]
leadership was first forced to confront the victims of abuse at a meeting in
May 1996, when a panel of ten former Krishna pupils testified that they had
been regularly beaten and caned at school, de- nied medical care and sexually
molested and raped homo- sexually at knife point (Goodstein,
1998).
Or, as Hubner and Gruson (1990) alleged:
[B]oys were ordered to come to the
front of the class and sit on [their teacher] Sri Galima’s lap. Sri Galima then
anally raped them, right in front of the class. Other boys were or- dered to
stay after class. Sri Galima tied their hands to their desks with duct tape and
then assaulted them in the same way.
At night,
Fredrick DeFrancisco, Sri Galima’s assistant, crept into the boys’ sleeping
bags and performed oral sex on them.
George Harrison
was of course stabbed in his London home at the end of 1999 by a man who
believed that the Beatles were “witches.” Interestingly, one of the reasons
given by his attacker for continuing
that attempt at murder was that Harrison kept chanting the protective mantra,
“Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna”— interpreted by his disturbed assailant as a curse
from Satan.
In any case,
returning to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s mission: The number of people practicing
TM grew nearly exponentially from 1967 through 1974. By 1975 there were more
than half a mil- lion people in America who had learned the technique, over a
mil- lion worldwide, and the Maharishi had been featured on the cover of Time magazine. Were that exponential
growth to have contin- ued, the entire United States would have been doing TM
by 1979. As it stands, with the law of diminishing returns and otherwise, there
are currently four million practitioners of Transcendental Meditation
worldwide.
In 1973,
Maharishi International University (MIU) was estab- lished in Santa Barbara,
California, moving a year later to its per-
manent location in Fairfield, Iowa.
Interestingly, when the Mahar- ishi first touched down in the latter location
in his pink airplane, perhaps influenced by his contact with the Beatles (“How
do you find American taste?/We don’t know, we haven’t bitten any yet,” etc.),
he quaintly announced: “We are in Fairfield, and what we find is a fair field.”
Approximately
one thousand students currently practice TM and study Vedic theory in that “fair field,”
particularly as the latter
theory relates to accepted academic disciplines, including the hard sciences.
MIU has since been re-christened as the Maharishi Uni- versity of Management
(MUM). Presently, one-quarter of the town’s 10,000 residents are meditators.
* * *
In 1976, the Maharishi discovered
the principles which were to lead to
the TM Sidhi [sic] Program—based on
the siddhis or pow- ers outlined in
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Those
include the tech- nique of Yogic Flying, or levitation ... or “hopping down the
yogi trail”:
During the first stage of Yogic
Flying, the body—motivated only by the effortless mental impulse of the Sidhi technique
—rises up in
the air in a series of blissful hops (Maharishi, 1995).
“It’s a form of levitation, you’re
actually lifted one or two feet by the exhilaration” that some describe as
“bubbling bliss,” explained Transcendental Meditation spokesman Joseph Boxerman
(Associated Press, 2003).
[Taxi’s
Andy Kaufman had a] consuming devotion to Tran- scendental Meditation ...
he believed it had taught him to levitate (Blanco, 2000).
[T]he guru himself announced in 1978
on TV (“The Merv Griffin Show”) that he had enrolled some forty thousand stu-
dents in this [Sidhi] course! Griffin then asked the obvious question: How many
had learned to levitate? Declared the Great Guru: “Thousands!” (Randi, 1982).
Repeated
attempts by the skeptical Mr. Randi to secure docu- mented and believable
evidence of that levitation were unsuccess- ful. He did, however,
report (1982) receiving the following admis-
sion, from one Mr. Orme-Johnson, director of TM’s International
Center for Scientific Research:
“We do not claim,” he said, “that
anyone is hovering in the air.”
Nevertheless,
hovering or not, the possible effects of one’s missed practice on the world
were apparently not to be taken lightly:
At MIU and throughout the [TM]
movement, guilt was used to manipulate students into never missing a flying
session. When the Iranians seized the American Embassy, a MIU student friend who
had missed a flying session was called into the dean’s office and blamed for
the hostage-taking in Iran (Patrick L. Ryan, in [Langone,
1995]).
All of that
notwithstanding, by 1994 the technique of “Yogic Flying” had been taught to
more than 100,000 people worldwide.
The Maharishi has also claimed that
advanced practitioners can develop powers of invisibility, mind-reading,
perfect health and immortality (Epstein, 1995).
His Holiness
further asserted a “Maharishi Effect,” whereby relatively small numbers of
meditators are claimed to be able to positively and measurably influence world
events. That phenome- non has even been alleged to measurably lower crime rates
in re- gions such as Washington, DC, and Kosovo
(in August of 1999), via the “accumulated good energy” of the practitioners.
As a press release on the website
states, “When the group reached about 350 Yogic Flyers, the [Kosovo]
destruction ended” (Kraus, 2000).
In the early ’90s, four thousand of
the Maharishi’s followers spent eight weeks in Washington holding large-scale
group meditations. They claimed they helped reduce crime during that time. But
the District’s police department was uncon- vinced (Perez-Rivas,
2000).
In a more
detailed analysis of relevant data, Randi (1982) has presented many additional,
quantitative reasons to deeply ques- tion the reality of the so-called
Maharishi Effect.
Such critical
analyses aside, however, there seems to be little doubt within the ranks as to
the beneficial effects of TM on the course of world history:
[A]ll the social good—the move away
from potential world- wide disaster toward global enlightenment—that has devel-
oped in the last few years I naturally consider to be the re- sult of more
people practicing Transcendental Meditation. After all, Maharishi did say that
this would happen way back then
[i.e., in the late 1950s], and it has (Olson, 1979).
More recently,
“the Maharishi said he intends to bring about world peace by establishing huge
Transcendental Meditation cen- ters with thousands of full-time practitioners
all over the world” (Falsani, 2002).
Maharishi explains that every
government, just by creating and maintaining a group of Yogic Flyers, will
actualize the ideal of Administration [of the Natural Law “Constitution of the Universe”], the supreme quality
of Administration of gov-
ernment in every generation (in Maharishi, 1995).
“Natural Law”
is “the orderly principles—the laws of nature— that govern the functioning of
nature everywhere, from atoms to ecosystems to galaxies” (Maharishi, in [Kraus, 2000]).
Governmental “administration,”
further,
is a matter of expert intelligence.
It shouldn’t be exposed to voters on the street [i.e., to democracy]
(Maharishi, in [Wet- tig, 2002]).
Soon every government will maintain
its own group of Yogic Flyers as the essential requirement of national
administra- tion, and every nation will enjoy the support of Natural Law. All
troubles on Earth will fade into distant memories, and life will be lived in perfection and fulfillment by every
citizen of every nation, now and for countless generations to come (Maharishi, 1995).
Such
anticipated “fading of all troubles into distant memory” will undoubtedly have
been aided by the formation, in 1992, of the politically “green” Natural Law
Party, on the campus of MIU/ MUM. The party
has since fielded
U.S. presidential candidates,
and legislative hopefuls in
California. The late magician and disci- ple Doug Henning, a long-time sincere
TM practitioner and at- tempted “Yogic Flyer,” actually ran for office under
the NLP ban- ner in both Britain and Toronto.
In keeping with
the hoped-for freedom from our secular trou- bles, in the wake of September 11,
2001,
the Maharishi announced that if some
government gave him a billion dollars, he would end terrorism and create peace
by hiring 40,000 Yogic Fliers to start hopping full time. No gov- ernment took
him up on the offer, which clearly irks him (Carlson,
2002).
And yet, the
freedom from war and other troubles anticipated by the Great Sage appears to
have its cost:
I
have heard Maharishi
say on occasion that in the society
he envisions, if someone is not smiling or happy he would be picked up
by a meditation paddy wagon and taken to a checking facility for the proper TM treatment
and then re- leased (Scott, 1978).
* * *
One of the primary selling points of
TM has always been its pur- ported “scientific” nature, and the studies which
have been done claiming to corroborate its beneficial effects. However:
One three-year study done by the
National Research Council on improving human performance concluded that “TM is
in- effectual in improving human
performance” and that pro-TM researchers were “deeply
flawed in their methodology” (Ross, 2003a).
Consult Holmes
(1988) for additional information regarding
the reported effects, or lack of same, of TM and other forms of meditation.
* * *
With or without the young Ms.
Farrow’s bodacious presence around
the Maharishi’s ashrams, controversy continues to haunt the $3.5 billion worldwide
enterprise of the yogic “Sixth Beatle.” (The late ex-guitarist Stuart Sutcliffe
was known as the “fifth.”)
His
compound in India was the focus of allegations [in The Il-
lustrated Weekly of India, July
17, 1988] regarding
“child mo- lestation, death
from abuse and neglect” (Ross, 2003a).
The [previous media] reports charged
that at least five boys had died under mysterious circumstances and that about
8000 of the 10,000 children admitted to the vidya peeth in the past five years had run away from the
ashram, allegedly because of the “torture” they had been subjected to
inside....
To make matters
more difficult for the ashram admini- stration, [local MLA Mahendra Singh]
Bhati and an ayur- vedic physician, Dr. Govind Sharma, formerly employed at the
ashram, charged that some of the boys were also sub- jected to sexual abuse by
the teachers (Dutt, 1988).
The ashram
itself has denied all of those allegations, in the same article.
And how have
other, past problems within the sphere of influ- ence of the Late Great Sage
been handled? It depends on whom you
ask; Skolnick (1991), for one, reported:
“I was taught to lie and to get
around the petty rules of the ‘unenlightened’ in order to get favorable reports
into the me- dia,” says [one former, high-ranking follower]. “We were taught
how to exploit the reporters’ gullibility and fascina- tion with the exotic,
especially what comes from the East. We thought we weren’t doing anything
wrong, because we were told it was often necessary to deceive the unenlightened
to advance our guru’s plan to save the world.”
CHAPTER IX
BEEN HERE, DONE THAT, WHAT NOW?
(RAM DASS, ETC.)
It is useful here to remember that
your guru, even though you may not have met him in his manifest [i.e.,
physical] form ... KNOWS EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU ... EVERY- THING (Dass, 1971).
RAM DASS, AUTHOR of Be Here Now—one of the seminal books
stir- ring widespread interest in Eastern philosophy and gurus in the West—is
one of the good-at-heart guys through all this. He has, indeed, endeared
himself to many by his sincerity. His ability to admit when he is wrong has
also come in handy, in terms of his experiences with the contemporary female
spiritual leader Ma Jaya Sati
Bhagavati.
Born Richard
Alpert in 1931, Dass graduated from Stanford University with a Ph.D. in
Psychology. He went on to participate, with Timothy Leary, in a research program
into altered states
of
69
consciousness at Harvard, utilizing
large amounts of LSD under relatively uncontrolled circumstances. Those same
activities got him fired from that faculty in 1963.
Four years
later, Alpert journeyed to India, meeting two rele- vant people there: Bhagavan
Das, and the man who soon became his guru—Neem Karoli Baba or “Maharajji”
(“Great King”).
Bhagavan Das
had grown up in Laguna Beach, California, coming to India on his own in 1964 at
age eighteen, and later be- coming one of Ram Dass’ teachers. As Ram himself
described their first encounter:
I met this guy and there was no
doubt in my mind [that he “knew”]. It was just like meeting a rock. It was just
solid, all the way through. Everywhere I pressed, there he was! (Dass, 1971).
Of course,
Dass also considered the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Gar- cia to be a “bodhisattva” (Meier,
1992), so “consider the source” in that regard. And indeed, as if to warn us of
the gulf which more often than not exists between the real state of any guru or
teacher, compared with the pedestal upon which he has been put by his fol-
lowers, Das himself, years later (1997),
gave his own honest evalu- ation of his earlier spiritual state:
Ram Dass would describe me [in Be Here Now] as if I were some kind of
enlightened, mythical being. But I was just a lost child, trying to find my way
home to Mother....
Unfortunately,
because of my work with Ram Dass and because I was Maharajji’s sadhu [i.e., ascetic], many of the
[East] Indians were starting to overestimate my powers.
At other times,
the boons of such “powers” included Das’ wak- ing up to a seventeen-year-old
blond girl (Swedish) on one side of his Nepalese cowshed bed, and a silent,
young Frenchwoman with long, black hair on the other side.
In any case,
Bhagavan Das soon left that sylvan paradise be- hind to drop acid with Alpert
in Kathmandu, and then reluctantly road-tripped with him back to India. He soon
introduced that new uptight, bisexual (and “too interested in him”) friend to
Karoli Baba—partly in the hope of getting rid of him (Das,
1997). To Karoli, Das gave Alpert’s friend’s Land Rover vehicle, while
Alpert himself claims to have once fed the guru twelve
hundred micro-
grams of LSD—many
times the “safe”
dosage—with no apparent effect.
Some said they’d seen [Neem Karoli
Baba’s] body grow really
huge, and others claimed they’d seen him shrink down very small. And then there
were those who swore they’d seen him [as an incarnation of the monkey god
Hanuman] with a tail (Das, 1997).
[Neem Karoli Baba] is God; he knows
everything (in Muker- jee, 1996).
Of course, such
high reviews of Maharajji naturally
came from very hero-worshiping angles. By contrast, Andrew Cohen’s former guru,
H. W. L. Poonja, offered a perspective on the same sagely individual which is
either more balanced, or more unbalanced, as may be left for the reader to
judge:
When I had asked [Poonja] what his
opinion was of the now famous deceased guru Neem Karoli Baba, he went on to de-
scribe in detail about how he had met him and that he knew that he was
completely insane and “mad,” but that many people mistook his insanity
for Enlightenment. Several
years later [following Cohen’s and Poonja’s bitter separation] when
devotees of Neem Karoli would go to [Poonja] he would praise him as the highest
(Cohen, 1992).
The following
story, from a female disciple of Baba, does noth- ing to settle the question as
to insanity versus enlightenment:
The first time he took me in the
room alone I sat up on the tucket [a low wooden bed] with him, and he was like a seven- teen-year-old jock who was a
little fast! I felt as if I were fif- teen and innocent. He started making out
with me, and it was so cute, so pure. I was swept into it for a few moments—
then grew alarmed: “Wait! This is my guru. One doesn’t do this with one’s
guru!” So I pulled away from him. Then Ma- harajji tilted his head sideways and
wrinkled up his eye- brows in a tender, endearing, quizzical look. He didn’t
say anything, but his whole being was saying to me, “Don’t you like me?”
But as soon as
I walked out of that particular darshan [the
blessing which is said to flow from even the mere sight of a saint], I started
getting so sick that by the
end of the day
I felt I had vomited and shit out
everything that was ever in- side me. I had to be carried out of the ashram. On
the way, we stopped by Maharajji’s room so I could pranam [i.e., offer a reverential greeting] to him. I kneeled by
the tucket and put my head down by his feet—and he kicked me in the head, saying, “Get her out of here!”....
That was the
first time, and I was to be there for two years. During my last month there, I
was alone with him every day in the room Sometimes he would just touch me
on the breasts and between my legs,
saying, “This is mine, this is mine,
this is mine.
All is mine. You are mine.” You can
interpret it as you want, but near the end in these darshans, it was as though he were my child. Sometimes I felt as
though I were suckling a tiny baby (in Dass, 1979).
Of course,
devoted disciples of the homoerotic pedophile Rama-
krishna viewed his “divine” motherly/suckling tendencies just as positively.
At any rate,
after a mere few months at the feet of Neem Karoli Baba, Ram Dass returned to
the U.S. at Karoli’s behest, to teach.
Hilda [Charlton] referred to [Ram
Dass] as the “doorway of enlightenment for America,” incarnated for the age,
having once been one of the Seven Sages on the order of Vishwami- tra: a full
master (Brooke, 1999).
Beginning in
1974, at the height of his fame, Ram spent a
good amount of time with a female spiritual leader in New York City:
Joya Santana (now Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati), a claimed stig- matist and fellow follower
of Karoli Baba.
As Dass himself
tells the story:
Joya kept reiterating that she had
come to Earth only to be an instrument for my preparation as a world spiritual
leader and that ultimately she would sit at my feet....
Joya further
professed to be the Divine Mother herself (Dass and Levine, 1977).
That Mother
image evidently did not, however, couple suffi- ciently with Dass’
psychological training in Oedipal complexes and the like, to prevent the
predictable from allegedly occurring be- tween Joya and him:
last:
He even found a convoluted way to
justify a sexual relation- ship with Joya [which she insists did not occur],
despite the fact that she required all of her students to take a strict vow of
celibacy and publicly took one herself. Joya professed no physical desires, and
Ram Dass willingly accepted her ex- planation that by having sex together, she
was actually teaching him to become just as unattached to
physical desire as she claimed she was (Schwartz,
1996).
That reported
“thrill of learning,” unfortunately, was not to
There were just too many “signals,”
like the moment Joya and I were hanging out and the telephone rang. She picked
up the receiver and in a pained whisper said, “I can’t talk now, I’m too stiff”
[i.e., in samadhi], and let the receiver drop. Then without hesitation she
continued our conversa- tion as if nothing had happened. I realized how many
times I had been at the other end of the phone....
I began to see
the similarity between what I was experi- encing and the stories I had heard
about other movements, such as Reverend Moon’s group, the so-called Jesus
Freaks, and the Krishna-consciousness scene. Each seemed a total reality that
made involvement a commitment which disal- lowed change....
It seemed that
[Joya’s] incredible energies came not solely from spiritual sources but were
[allegedly] enhanced by energizing
pills. Her closest confidants now confessed many times they were ordered to
call me to report terrible cries [sic]
they knew to be untrue. They complied because Joya had convinced them that it
was for my own good.
Such stories
of deception came thick and fast. I had been had (Dass and Levine, 1977).
In happier
days, the married
Bhagavan Das too had, for a
time, been part of the same energetic “scene”
with Joya:
We were having a huge meeting and
Joya said, “Bhagavan Das, stand up!” I stood up and she said, “Shivaya stand
up! Shivaya, take Bhagavan Das to a whorehouse right now!” The next thing I
knew I was in a whorehouse in Manhattan on Christmas Day (Das, 1997).
“It’s a Wonderful
Life.”
*
* *
So
where are they now?
Well, Neem Karoli Baba passed away in the autumn of 1973. Ram Dass himself sadly suffered a serious stroke in 1997, pro-
viding him with the personal background to complete a touching
and (thankfully) relatively
non-mystical book on aging—Still Here. The sixty-something Joya, in no danger of “sitting at Ram Dass’ feet” at any point in the near
future, continues her teaching activities at her own Kashi Ashram in Florida.
That environment itself, along with its “Ma,” has been uncomplimentarily profiled numerous times in various
local, regional and national
newspapers and magazines since the mid-’70s,
as documented at www.kashi ashram.com. Also see Tobias
and Lalich’s (1994) Captive Hearts,
Captive Minds.
And what of the “mythical being,”
Bhagavan Das, in America?
I ... found myself onstage before
thousands of people, I named babies
and blessed people, and people fell at my feet. I felt like a king with my patrons and movie stars, but I was
still a kid, a guru at twenty-five, sitting on a tiger skin in a Manhattan town
house....
After three
years of “spiritual life” that was really a party [drugs, groupies, etc.], I
got sick of it and wanted to be home with my children. I rejoined the world and
[ironically, given the Land Rover incident] sold used cars in Santa Cruz, I
became a businessman, and I gradually lost my sense of [the] divine completely
(in Kornfield, 2000).
At one point
during that Faustian descent into the business world, after having experienced
a profoundly moving vision of the crucified Jesus, Das actually became a born-again Christian, there- by
returning to his family’s Episcopalian roots.
I was now officially in Bible
college, and I was going to be a pastor....
I got rid of
everything but my Bible, which I worshiped. I’d go to bed with my Bible, I’d
sleep with it, and I’d hug it. And God woke me up at all different times of the
night....
I would go into
Denny’s restaurant with my Bible, con- stantly looking for souls to save. I did
nothing but read the Bible and pray (Das, 1997).
Thence followed
Bhagavan’s “speaking in tongues” with his lo- cal, polyester-wearing
congregation. Also followed an affair with a blond, teenage choir girl “in
tight blue jeans,” which got Das—in his forties at the time—branded and
counseled as a “fornicator” by the church.
None of that
latter disrepute, however, could shake the ex- yogi’s inner peace:
I felt completely saved and totally
free. The freedom I had felt in that
tantric sexual experience with the choir girl was like being with Mary and
Jesus (Das, 1997).
Praise! “Gimme
that ol’ time religion,” “ménage a Trinity,” etc. Further, by Das’ own (1997) admission: Alcoholism, AA, a nearly
six-figure income selling
insurance, another “wild
‘n’ nek- kid” Scandinavian
teenager, and back into smoking pot and doing magic mushrooms. Finally turned
on, tuned in and dropped out of the business world,
rediscovered himself as “Bhagavan Das” the
mystic, hooked up with another
eighteen-year-old girl whom he
took as both a lover and disciple, etc.
All of which,
one must admit, is still markedly less eye- popping—by California standards, at
least—than was Das’ earlier cooking of (energy-transferring) placenta soup for
his wife (which she, and he, ate) after the births of two of their children, during
his yogic days.
“Been here, done that ... what now?”
Indeed, “What now?”
CHAPTER X
SCORPION-MAN
(SATYA SAI BABA)
The words of an aristocratic Indian
girl I knew in Delhi rang in my ears, “You foreigners will accept anyone as a
guru— people like Maharishi are export items as common as tea, but we Indians will have nothing to do
with them. [The Ma- harishi, however, is also a non-brahmin (Mangalwadi, 1992), perhaps accounting for a large part of
the indigenous reluc- tance to accept him and his teachings.] There is only one
I have heard of who the Indians trust,
he is Sai Baba” (Brooke, 1999).
Swami Amritananda, companion of
Bhagavan Ramana Ma- harshi [1879 – 1950], was convinced that Sri Satya Sai Baba
knew yogic science better than anyone else in his experience (Kasturi, 1971).
Although Sai Baba only attended
school to the age of thir- teen, he has complete mastery of the scriptures, of
all the sciences, arts, languages—of all fields of study. As a matter of fact, he knows everything—including the
past, present and future of all of
our lives (Warner, 1990).
76
[Sai Baba] says he is an avatar, or
the divine prophet of God for our time (Giuliano,
1989).
The Avatar is one only, and this one
body is taken by the Avatar (Sai Baba, in [Hislop, 1978]).
By 1963 Baba had begun to claim that
he was the incarna- tion of Shiva and Shakti. Since
the Westerners have begun
to follow him, he has also declared
that he is Jesus Christ who has come again (Mangalwadi, 1992).
[W]hen it became obvious that I was
not going to leave this issue [of alleged sexual abuses on the part of Sai
Baba] alone, a couple of [national
coordinators] telephoned me to say that yes I was correct and they had known of
this for years. “But he is God, and God can do anything he likes” (Bailey and Bailey, 2003).
FOR THE PAST
HALF CENTURY, Satya Sai Baba has been India’s “most famous and most powerful
holy man” (Brown, 2000), re- nowned for his
production of vibhuti or “sacred
ash,” and for nu- merous other claimed materializations of objects “out of thin
air.”
Sai Baba was
born, allegedly of immaculate conception, in southern India in 1926.
At the tender
age of thirteen, he was stung by a scorpion. Fol- lowing that, he announced
that he was the new incarnation of Shirdi Sai Baba, a saint who had died eight years before Satya was born.
Some accounts
have the previous inhabitant of his body “dy- ing” from that sting, and Sai
Baba’s spirit taking it over at that vacated point, as opposed to his having
been in the body from its conception or birth. (Adi Da, whom we shall meet
later, claims to have been guided by the same spirit during his sadhana.)
In any case,
from those humble, Spider-Man-like beginnings, Sai Baba has gone on to attract
an estimated ten to fifty million followers worldwide, with an organizational
worth of around $6 billion. Included among those disciples is Isaac Tigrett,
co-founder of the Hard Rock Cafe; the “Love All – Serve All” motto of that
chain is a direct quote from Baba. Also, jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson—who has reportedly pleaded
with Sai Baba to heal his
progressive hearing failure, to no avail—and Sarah Ferguson, the
former wife of Prince Andrew.
It is believed that the guru once
granted [George] Harrison a rare personal audience at his Anantapur ashram in
India sometime in the mid-’70s. John and Yoko also met with Sai Baba around
that time. It was from this experience that Lennon later made the quizzical
comment, “Guru is the pop star of India. Pop stars are the gurus of the West” (Giuliano, 1989).
Interestingly,
the late, great jazzman John Coltrane’s second wife, Alice (now Swami
Turiyasangitananda), on the basis of her own visions, claims that “Sai Baba is
described by the Lord as ‘one of my sacred embodiments’” (Rawlinson, 1997). Coltrane
himself had earlier been introduced to the teachings of Krishnamurti by his pianist, Bill Evans.
* * *
No “divine prophet of our time” would so descend, of course, with-
out manifesting numerous “signs and wonders.”
Like Christ, [Sai Baba] is said to
have created food to feed multitudes; to have “appeared” to disciples in times
of crisis or need. There are countless accounts of healings, and at least two
of his having raised people from the dead (Brown, 2000).
The first
widespread indications that Sai Baba’s manifesta- tions might be less than
miraculous, however, occurred in the con- text of a visit to his ashram by an
East Indian prime minister, in which Sai Baba appeared to materialize a gold
watch as a gift.
[W]hen Indian state television workers
played back film of the incident in slow motion, they saw that the miracle was
a sleight-of-hand hoax. The clip was never broadcast in India but has been
widely circulated on videotape there (Kennedy, 2001).
That, of
course, would have come as no surprise to any of the skeptical magicians who
have, in the past, questioned and conse- quently dismissed Sai Baba’s
“miraculous” production of sacred ash
and other manifestations:
Examination of films and videotapes
of Sai Baba’s actual performances show them to be simple sleight of hand, ex-
actly the same as the sort used by the other Indian jaduwal- lahs, or “street conjurors.” Sai Baba has never submitted
to an examination of his abilities under controls, so his claims are totally
unproven (Randi, 1995).
A formerly
devoted, inner circle disciple of Sai Baba has inde- pendently confirmed all of that.
That is, Faye Bailey claims
to have personally seen
“rings, watches and other trinkets being palmed, or pulled out from the side of chair cushions” and “vibhuti tablets held between [Sai
Baba’s] fingers before being crushed and ‘mani- fest.’”
[Sai Baba’s] major and most
advertised “miracle” is the pro- duction from his apparently empty hand of a
substance known as “vibhuti” (“holy
ash”) which turns out on analysis to be powdered ashes of cow dung mixed with
incense. Street conjurors in India (jaduwallahs)
perform this trick by pre- paring small pellets
of ashes and concealing them at the base
of their fingers, then working
their fists to powder the pellets
and produce the flow of fine ash. Their trick is indistinguish- able from Sai
Baba’s miracle (Randi, 2000).
There are fantastic stories going
round about Sai Baba’s supposed powers, but in five years searching I have not found one to be genuine (Bailey and Bailey, 2003).
Beyerstein (1994) has given a further detailed, critical
analy- sis of Sai Baba’s paranormal claims.
* * *
The concerns surrounding Sai Baba
are not restricted to questions about the authenticity of his “miracles.”
Indeed, as early as 1976, Tal Brooke (1999) had told the story of his own
experiences during two years as a close
disciple of Baba in the late ’60s,
before convert- ing to
Christianity:
Baba’s nudging pelvis stopped. Suddenly
a hand unzipped my fly, then, like an adder returning home at dusk, the hand burrowed inside.
With less of a
purple (but perhaps more of a tie-dyed) hue, a friend of Brooke’s further
related the following tale, claimed to have occurred around a year later:
When all the others left and Baba
got [Patrick] alone ... the next thing that happened was that in one smooth
motion, Baba reached down and unzipped Patrick’s fly, and pulled his tool out....
[H]e worked up
a bone all right, and the next thing that happened is really gonna blow your
mind. Baba lifted his robe and inserted the thing. That’s right. Maybe he’s got
a woman’s organ and a man’s organ down there. Yeah, a her- maphrodite. But he
honestly inserted it. Patrick said it felt just like a woman.
More serious are the guru’s
alleged interests in young boys:
Conny Larsson, a well-known Swedish
film actor, says that not only did Sai Baba make homosexual advances towards
him, but he was also told by young male disciples of ad- vances the guru had
made on them (Brown, 2000).
Larsson himself
claims that the guru regularly practiced oral sex on him—and asked for it in
return—over a five-year period. “By
1986, Mr. Larsson had talked to many young male devotees, most of them attractive
blond Westerners, who told him they too had had sex with Sai Baba” (B. Harvey, 2000a). He says he now receives twenty
to thirty emails a day from victims “crying out for help” (Brown, 2000).
Hans de Kraker ... who first visited
Sai Baba’s ashram in 1992, said the guru would regularly rub oil on his
genitals, claiming it was a religious cleansing, and eventually tried to force
him to perform oral sex (P. Murphy, 2000).
Another
sixteen-year-old boy whose parents were both Sai devotees told his story to them:
Sai Baba, he said, had kissed him,
fondled him and at- tempted to force him to perform oral sex, explaining that
it was for “purification.” On almost every occasion Sai Baba had given him gifts of watches, rings,
trinkets and cash, in
total around $10,000. He had told
him to say nothing to his parents....
In 1998 [i.e., at age eighteen],
according to [the boy], Sai Baba attempted to rape him (Brown, 2000).
None of the
above allegations, however, have unduly swayed the faith of those close to Sai
Baba:
[British Columbia Sai Baba president
Nami] Thiyagaratnam
... says he’s not surprised that
people are trying to ruin the reputation of such a wondrous
man. After all, he says,
people also persecuted Jesus Christ and Buddha (Todd,
2001).
Dr. Michael Goldstein, the
influential U.S. president of the Sai Baba organization, this year dismissed
all the accusa- tions. He says they’re unbelievable and that Sai Baba re- mains
divinely pure, filled only with “selfless love.” The an- swer for those who
doubt, says Goldstein, is to show more faith (Todd,
2001).
Or, as Baba himself put it (in Dass, 1971):
The influence of the Guru is
obstructed by mental activity, by
reliance on one’s own exertions and by every kind of self- consciousness and
self-exertion.
Sai Baba is reported to have said
recently to his devotees: “Never try to understand me” (Harpur, 2001).
The head of at
least one overseas arm of the Sai organization correspondingly refuses to warn
families taking children to Baba’s ashram in Puttaparthi, about the reports of
pedophilia.
Sai Baba, who hardly ever grants
media interviews, alluded to the allegations himself at an address last year,
saying, “Some devotees seem to be disturbed over these false state- ments. They
are not true devotees at all” (Goldberg, 2001).
Being “God,”
after all, means
never having to say you’re
sorry.
CHAPTER XI
EVEN IF
IT HAPPENED....
(SWAMI RAMA)
SWAMI RAMA WAS SUPPOSEDLY BORN in 1925, and allegedly grew up as an orphan in northern India. He was
soon reportedly adopt- ed there by “one of the greatest
masters of the Himalayas,” Bengali Baba.
At the age of
twenty-four, the story goes that he was given the position of Shankaracharya of
Karvirpitham—one of four “popes” in
the Hindu religious hierarchy. A mere two years later, however, he apparently
simply abandoned that position, leaving without no- tice to meditate in the
mountains instead.
Rama also
claimed to have later studied in Hamburg, Utrecht and at Oxford University. It
turns out (Webster, 1990), however, that
significant elements in the official biography of the swami may well have been merely “pulled out of
thin air.”
In any case,
Rama definitely came to the United States in 1969, and was soon participating
in biofeedback demonstrations under Elmer and Alyce Green, at the Menninger
Foundation in Topeka, Kansas. There, he showed the ability to consciously con-
trol various aspects of his autonomic (involuntary) nervous system.
82
In 1971, the
swami founded the Himalayan International In- stitute—“HI,” publisher of Yoga International magazine—in Illi-
nois, with the goal of translating ancient
spiritual wisdom into con-
temporary terms. By 1977, that organization had moved to an ash- ram in the
Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania, capa- ble of housing more than
one hundred residents and guests, along with their Institute headquarters.
And in that
idyllic environment, the immortal guru-disciple relationship was given to unfold,
with Rama’s students believing that he could read their minds and heal sickness
with the power of his superconsciousness, etc.
That, though,
is exactly par for the course: for the disciples to think any less of the guru
would make them “disloyal,” riddled with
mayic doubt.
* * *
In December of 1990, Yoga Journal published an exposé
detailing allegations of misbehavior, including sexual abuse, against Rama.
One of the
women involved further described a public, non- sexual encounter with the sage.
There, the swami allegedly put a dog collar and leash around a woman’s neck,
walking her around for the amusement of the other
loyal followers present.
He was also accused of kicking other women in the buttocks when they
were weeding, already down on their hands and knees (Webster,
1990).
Pandit Rajmani
Tigunait, at the time the resident
spiritual di- rector of the Honesdale ashram and a member of the Institute’s
teaching staff, reportedly responded (in Webster,
1990) to the alle- gations of sexual abuse in this way:
Even if it happened, what’s the big
deal? People say that Mahatma Gandhi slept with women. God knows whether it was
true or not, and even if it was true, this is a normal phe- nomenon....
Even if I found
out—how can I find out? Because I do not
want to find out. There’s no need for finding out, if I know it is completely wrong.
The reported
reaction of Swami Rama’s community to the women asserting improprieties on his
part was further exactly as one would expect. That is, they were allegedly discounted
as being
“emotionally disturbed,” or otherwise reportedly regarded as “liars” (Webster,
1990).
* * *
As Tigunait noted above, Mahatma
Gandhi was indeed sleeping with teenage girls (including his cousin’s
granddaughter) toward the end of his life. As odd as it may sound, however, all
reports are that the two parties were literally
just sleeping beside each other, for him to test his resistance to sexual
desire.
In explaining his position, Gandhiji
said that it was indeed true that he permitted women workers to use his bed,
this being undertaken as a spiritual experiment at times. Even if there were no
trace of passion in him of which he was con- scious, it was not unlikely that a
residue might be left over, and that would make trouble for the girls who took
part in his experiment [cf. “In the presence of one perfected in non- violence,
enmity (in any creature) does not arise”—Patanjali, Yoga Sutras] (Bose, 1974).
The possible
psychological effects of that on the girls them- selves, even without any
breach of his brahmacharya celibacy
vow, does not seem to have concerned the Mahatma.
Of course,
Gandhi’s very human displays of (non-righteous) temper alone would have been
enough to demonstrate to him or anyone else that he was not yet perfected in ahimsa. Those erup- tions were indeed
reported by his one-time secretary, N. K. Bose, a distinguished anthropologist
who resigned the former secretarial position in part because of his objections
to the Mahatma’s above “experiments.” Gandhi’s own admitted “detestation of
sensual con- nection,” too, is a type of psychological violence upon himself.
For, when it comes to metaphysical questions regarding attachment, repulsion is
no better than is attraction.
Both Chapter
XVIII of Bose’s (1974) My Days with
Gandhi and Chapter 4 in
Koestler’s (1960) The Lotus and the Robot
give reasonable analyses of the all-too-human psychological reasons behind
Gandhi’s emphasis on celibacy. Included in those is the Mahatma’s abandoning of
his father on the latter’s deathbed to be with his young wife sexually, thus
being absent from the old man’s death, for which he never forgave himself.
Koestler also
covers Gandhi’s disappointing treatment of his children, in the same book. That handling included the Mahatma’s
denying of a professional education to his older sons, in the at-
tempt to mold them in his
image. The eldest was later disowned by
the “Great Soul” for having gotten married
against his father’s prohibitions; and died an
alcoholic wreck, after having been pub- licly
attacked by Gandhi for his involvement
in a business scandal.
Why then are
the stories of the Mahatma’s “experiments with teenage girls” not more widely
known?
The Gandhians were so thorough in
effacing every trace of the scandal that Bose’s book is unobtainable not only
in In- dia, but also at the British Museum (Koestler, 1960).
* * *
Swami Rama passed away in 1996,
being survived by, it has been suggested, at least one child (Webster, 1990).
In the autumn
of 1997, Pennsylvania jurors awarded $1.875 million in damages to a former
female resident of the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale, PA. The woman in
question claimed to have been
sexually assaulted by Rama a full thirty times over a Yogic Summer of Love in
the early ’90s. At the time, she was a nineteen-year-old virgin, just out of high school. Yet, as reported
by Phelps (1997), the Institute allegedly
“did nothing to stop” that claimed abuse, even though having reportedly been
informed not only of those alleged assaults but of similar complaints
registered by other female disciples.
Pandit
Tigunait, who accepted Rama as his guru when just a child in India, is now the
“spiritual head of the Himalayan Insti- tute,” and the acknowledged “spiritual
successor” to Swami Rama there.
“Even if it happened. ”
CHAPTER XII
MO’
CHIN-UPS
(SRI CHINMOY)
Sri Chinmoy is a fully realized
spiritual Master dedicated to inspiring and serving those seeking a deeper
meaning in life (Chinmoy, 1985).
Sect members believe that Chinmoy is
an “avatar” (Eisen- stadt, 1993).
A NATIVE OF BANGLADESH,
Chinmoy Kumar Ghose arrived in the United States in 1964, having previously
lived for two decades at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India. Three years later,
he started his own Aum meditation center in Queens, New York.
Once described
by the Wall Street Journal as “the
stunt man of the spiritual world,”
Chinmoy has earned that appellation many times over, via numerous demonstrated
“feats of strength.”
The Supreme doesn’t want you to be
satisfied with fifty me- ters. He wants you to run fifty-one meters, fifty-two
meters, fifty-four meters. Otherwise, if you always aim at the same
goal, it becomes
monotonous (Chinmoy, in [Jackson, 1996]).
86
Weight-lifting is “the perfect
analogy to the spiritual life,” explains one
devotee. “As the dead weight is lifted up, so also a person’s lower, unilluminated
being can be lifted to a level of increased peace, light, and delight” (Rae, 1991).
Chinmoy’s
publicized weight-lifting stunts (aided by a Nauti- lus-like machine which does
most of the work) have included:
·
Lifting one thousand
sheep (four at a time) in Australia
·
Raising a Piper Arrow aircraft
while balanced on one leg
·
Hoisting the prime minister of Iceland, two San Francisco 49ers,
four Nobel laureates, comedian Eddie Murphy (speaking of “dead weight”), the
Reverend Jesse Jackson, a Ford pickup, an elephant and a small schoolhouse
(sepa- rately) into the air. Also, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Muhammad Ali,
Susan Sarandon, Jeff Goldblum, Yoko Ono,
Sting and Richard Gere (separately)
Nor are the
man’s quantitative accomplishments limited to weight-lifting. Rather, if
Chinmoy’s followers are to be believed, the
man has written at least 1200 books, 62,000 poems and 14,000 songs.
In 1974 he wrote 360 poems in
twenty-four hours, then the next year batted out 843 verses in a single day. In
one hun- dred days from November 1974 to February 1975 he com- pleted 10,000
“works of art”—pen-and-inks, abstract acrylics,
watercolors (Jackson, 1996).
Indeed, by the
“avatar’s” own count, he has produced over four million drawings of birds, and
a total of more than 150,000 paint- ings.
Chinmoy is in
his seventies, so four million drawings would work out to over 150 per day, every day—or one every
ten minutes, if he had done nothing
during a sleepless life except “draw birds.”
Impressive.
Indeed, to do all that and still find time for medi- tation or working out
would almost require more than twenty-four hours in a day.
Such
record-setting “for God” seems to have rubbed off on at least one disciple of
Chinmoy’s, a Mr. Ashrita Furman, whose ac- tivities have included
simultaneous jogging and juggling
(six hours, seven minutes:
three balls); long-distance somersaulting (12.3 miles) along the same route
Paul Revere took through Boston; and un- derwater pogo-sticking (three hours,
forty minutes) in the Amazon River (Areddy, 1989).
For the latter
stunt, “a lookout was posted to keep watch for piranhas.”
As to the
spiritual advancement and years of meditation un- derlying his own evinced
productivity and demonstrated strength, Chinmoy (1978) explains:
After one has realized the Highest
and become consciously one with the Absolute Supreme, one has no need to pray
or meditate. But I have a number of disciples, so I meditate for them as I used
to meditate for myself many years ago.
Chinmoy further
leaves no doubt as to his own importance in effecting his disciples’ evolution:
The Guru has the power to nullify
the law of karma for his disciple (Chinmoy, 1985).
Without a guru, your progress will
be very slow and uncer- tain....
The best type
of meditation comes when you enter into my consciousness by looking at a
picture taken of me when I am in a high meditative consciousness (Chinmoy,
1978).
* * *
Chinmoy himself is a prolific
musical entertainer. Indeed, if his press kit is to be believed, the man has
performed close to three hundred concerts, for nearly half a million people in
thirty coun- tries over the past twenty years.
This is noteworthy because Chinmoy
and his supporters con- cede that he is not a gifted musician; he sometimes
makes mistakes and starts over, and
generally improvises the melo- dies
on the spot (Galloway, 1991).
Concert venues
have included the Royal Albert Hall of Lon- don, Carnegie Hall, Tokyo’s Nippon
Budokan—made famous in the West by Cheap Trick in the 1970s—and
the Sydney Opera House.
According to
Chinmoy’s website, his own personal record for “most instruments in a single
concert,” playing music to soothe the savage chakras—purported subtle energy
centers in the human body—is now up to 150.
There is some music that is really
destructive to our inner being. This music comes from the gross physical or the
lower vital. Undivine music tries to awaken our lower vital con- sciousness and
throw us into a world of excitement (Chin- moy, 1978).
Given that, it
is interesting to note that Chinmoy’s devotees have included Grammy-winning
musician and “guitar god” Carlos Santana who, with his wife, devotedly followed
Chinmoy for nine years, from 1972 to 1981. Also, Clarence “Born to Blow”
Clemons (Bruce Springsteen’s sax man), Roberta Flack and Sheena Easton.
“My guru takes
the morning train. ”
* * *
Chinmoy claims up to seven thousand
disciples worldwide, for- merly including the late Zen Master Rama, or Frederick Lenz. (Lenz’s first book was dedicated
to Chinmoy, prior to their split.) His reported teachings on the relation of
sex to spirituality for those students are unequivocal:
In
order to have Self-realization, celibacy
is absolutely neces- sary....
God-realization and the
sex life are like the combination of
sugar and salt. If we try to put them together we cannot taste either....
Those who are
really advanced find that lower vital ne- cessity does not enter into them. For
them the life of pleas- ure is replaced by the life of real joy. And naturally,
once re- alization takes place temptation
can never assail them (in Ross, 2003d;
italics added).
Such a
position, however, stands in contrast to the numerous allegations of sexual
misconduct made against the guru himself, raised via the Testimonials section
on the www.chinmoycult.com website. It
likewise does not square with the following allegations:
Some of his followers left ... amid
accusations that Chinmoy was making sexual advances toward the wives of his
disci- ples (Occhiogrosso, 1996).
Anne Carlton, a former member for
twenty years, told The [New York] Post Ghose [i.e., Chinmoy] summoned her for sexual encounters over
two extended periods—one in 1991 and another in 1996.
Then, in 2000,
Ghose [allegedly] called her at work and told her to have sex with another
female disciple while he watched (Ginsberg, 2004).
Chinmoy,
through his lawyer, has denied those sexual allega- tions.
Of course,
with the man’s penchant for quantity over quality—
i.e., “mo’ is better”—one almost
expects to hear Paul Bunyan-esque tales/allegations of
sexual conquest, too. For example, of having slept with 1200 women in a
twenty-four hour period while continu- ously playing the kazoo and sketching
thousands of images of as- sorted waterfowl, etc.
And what did
Chinmoy himself have to say about behaviors such as he has been accused of?
[S]o-called human weaknesses are one
thing; but if the Mas- ter indulges in lower vital life, sex life, then that
Master is very bad and you have to leave him (Chinmoy, 1985).
The Guru has to be a perfect example
of what he teaches. His outer being
has to be the perfect example of what he is saying. Otherwise he is not a Guru. The responsibility of a
Guru is tremendous. If the Guru is
not a perfect example of his teachings, then he is not a true Guru. He is what
in the medical world they call a “quack” (in Ross,
2003d).
Well, if it
looks like a duck, meditates like a duck, and lifts weights like a duck....
* * *
Carlos Santana, for one, no longer has any connection with Chin-
moy or his community.
After leaving the group it seems Sri Chinmoy “was pretty
vindictive,” recalls Santana.
“He told all my friends
not to
call me ever again, because I was to
drown in the dark sea of ignorance for leaving him” (Heath,
2000).
Or, as
Santana—Mr. Supernatural himself, whose strong sympathies for Eastern
philosophy persist to this day—put it in the
same Rolling Stone interview, when
speaking of Chinmoy’s path: “This shit is not for me.”
Now that’s mo’ like it!
CHAPTER XIII
THAI SURPRISE
Confucius say, “Man who go through airport turnstile side- ways
going to Bangkok.”
APPROXIMATELY 95% OF THE SIXTY-FIVE MILLION CITIZENS of Thai-
land (capital, Bangkok)
are Buddhists.
More than
350,000 monks and novices live in Thailand’s 35,000 temples—ten monks for every
temple, on average. Tenets enjoindered on
those devout monks include strict injunctions never to touch intoxicants or
women.
Clearly, such
restrictions would not constitute an easy or ex- citing life.
As if to break
such monotony, then, we have the renunciant monk who proudly exhibited over
sixty vintage cars—many of them
Mercedes-Benzes. Some of those were donated, others were purchased with money
from his temple treasury, with the claimed investment intention (though
questionable business acumen) of opening a museum to benefit that church.
There was also
the monk “caught on camera wearing a wig and
enjoying a nightlife of loud karaoke singing, boozing and other taboo acts” (Ehrlich, 2000).
92
There was,
further, the highly respected former Buddhist monk, accused of possible
embezzlement of funds, who stepped down as spiritual adviser to the prime
minister. That, after having also been accused of having sex with some of his
female followers and living a lavish lifestyle. “His monastery came complete
with the latest sound equipment, elaborate furnishings and luxury cars”
(PlanetSave, 2001).
There was the
deputy abbot who was recorded, in fine voice, engaging in phone sex with women
(Thompson, 2000).
There were the monks accused of selling amphetamines and
of hiring some of the country’s 700,000 prostitutes (Economist, 2000). “Two girls for every monk.”
There was the
Chivas Regal-drinking, Mercedes-driving abbot who was disrobed for allegedly
... er, disrobing. With two women at
the same time. Two nights in a row. While impersonating an army special forces
colonel—a serious crime.
A subsequent
search of the holy man’s private residence turned up pornographic materials,
lingerie and condoms. As well it
should, for a monk who was renowned among local law-enforce- ment officials for
going out on the town nearly every night.
There was also,
by abstinent contrast, the forty-year-old Bud- dhist monk who, as a protest
against the sufferings of those in his country, planned to immolate himself on
the steps of the Burmese embassy in Bangkok.
As he spoke, I discovered an
astonishing thing: although he planned to take his life to protest the great
injustices he had fought against for many years, this was not the real reason
for his decision. The true reason was that he had fallen in love with this
young girl. He had been in monk’s robes since age fourteen and for twenty-nine
years he had given his life to the order. He had no other skills and couldn’t
imagine himself married, with a family, yet he loved her. He did not know what
to do, so burning himself for political reasons seemed the best way out (Kornfield, 1993).
There
was—speaking of burning—the Thai monk who grue- somely roasted babies—already dead babies, thankfully—hoping to utilize the oil collected from them in magical ceremonies.
That was done with the intention of creating a “babyish ghost,” to be em-
ployed in the black magic manipulation of others (Ehrlich,
2000).
There was, even
more horribly, the monk accused of raping an eleven-year-old girl.
There was the
Buddhist abbot arrested for the alleged murder of a woman whose remains were
discovered floating in the septic tank at the house of a neighbor (Ehrlich, 2000).
There was, finally, the monk caught
committing necrophilia in a coffin beneath his temple’s
crematorium.
Thai surprise.
CHAPTER XIV
BATTLEFIELD TEEGEEACK
(SCIENTOLOGY)
Scientology is the one and only road
to total freedom and to- tal power (L. Ron Hubbard, in [Burroughs, 1995]).
Werner Erhard, of est fame, called
L. Ron Hubbard the “greatest philosopher of the twentieth century” (Corydon and
Hubbard, 1998).
Among the many affirmations that
Hubbard was known to have used was the following:
All men shall be my slaves! All
women shall suc- cumb to my charms! All mankind shall
grovel at my feet and not know why! (Wakefield, 1991).
As
religious zealots, Scientologists exceed any that have gone before. They have not simply a deep
faith that theirs is The Way. They can present a comprehensible whole; an all-
embracing answer to many of the problems that beset hu- manity (Vosper, 1997).
95
[Scientology is] the sole agency in
existence today that can forestall the erasure of all civilization or bring a
new better one (L. Ron Hubbard, in [Wallis, 1976]).
SCIENTOLOGY (LIKE ITS PRECURSOR, DIANETICS)
was founded in the
1950s by pulp/science fiction writer
Lafayette Ron Hubbard, who (dubiously) traced the religion’s origins to the
sacred Hindu Vedas, and further claimed to be the reincarnation of the Buddha.
Hubbard has been presented, in
publications for advanced students, as the Maitreya Buddha supposedly
prophesied to appear by Gautama Buddha (Wallis, 1976).
Most of Hubbard’s thousands of
followers regarded him as more brilliant than Einstein, more enlightened than Buddha,
and quite as capable of miracles as Christ (Atack,
1990).
L. Ron was
correspondingly viewed by his devoted disciples as being the only one who could
“save the world” (Miller, 1987).
But save the world ... from
what?
Evidently, from
the high-level Scientology teaching that sev- enty million years ago, our
Earth—called Teegeeack, then—was featured in a galaxy-wide federation oppressed
by one Xenu (or Xemu), an evil titan (played by the strictly heterosexual John Tra- volta). Faced with the problem of
overpopulation, Xenu had gath- ered up the ne’er-do-wells from his empire—among
them Jenna Elfman, Narconon spokesperson
Kirstie Alley (see Ross [2004b]; Penny [1993]), and the late Sonny Bono. He next confined
those individuals in terrestrial volcanoes, and utilized nuclear bombs to
explode the latter (and the former). The spirits (“thetans”) of those formerly
intact beings were then collected, imprisoned in frozen alcohol, and implanted
into human beings.
And that, as
even Tom Cruise could plainly see and under- stand, is the cause of all human suffering. Such deeply rooted
pain, however, can thankfully be alleviated through
Scientology’s “audit- ing”
procedures—those being aided by a simplified lie detector called an E-meter.
Indeed, through that expensive practice, Scien- tology “promises to heal the
psychic scars caused by traumas in present or past lives” (Richardson, 1993).
The claimed
seven million worldwide followers of Scientology have reportedly included jazz pianist Chick Corea, jazz singer Al
Jarreau, pop star Beck, Priscilla
Presley, and the voice of Bart Simpson, Nancy Cartwright. (Ironically, Bart’s sister is Lisa Marie,
named after Priscilla’s daughter; and the real Lisa Marie is her- self, along
with Priscilla, active in Scientology.) Also, Travolta’s wife Kelly Preston,
Cruise’s ex-wife Mimi Rogers, the late Aldous Huxley—who received auditing from
Hubbard himself—and Rich- ard de Mille (son of director Cecil). Jerry Seinfeld,
Patrick Swayze and Brad Pitt have also “drifted through” Scientology (Richardson, 1993); as have Mikhail Baryshnikov,
Van Morrison, Emilio Este- vez, Rock Hudson, Demi Moore, Candice Bergen, Isaac
Hayes, Mensa member Sharon
Stone and O. J. Simpson
prosecutor Marcia Clark.
Plus, as of 1970, it was claimed that Tennessee Williams, Leonard Cohen, Mama
Cass Elliot, Jim Morrison “and possibly the Beatles” were Scientologists (Cooper, 1971). The great jazz pianist Dave
Brubeck, too, believed that Scientology’s processing had aided his musical career (Evans, 1973).
Charles Manson
likewise apparently undertook around 150 hours of auditing while in prison (Atack, 1990). There, he report- edly reached the
celebrated level of “Clear,” prior to
his mass- murdering phase (Krassner, 1993).
The imprisoned
Manson was actually later doused with gaso- line and set on fire by a fellow
inmate, an ex-Hare Krishna—who himself had been convicted of killing his own
abortion-performing father—following Manson’s endless taunting of him for his
in-jail chanting and prayers (Muster, 1997).
In more recent
years, Dustin Hoffman and Goldie Hawn both signed an open letter to the
chancellor of Germany, protesting dis- crimination against Scientologists there
and hyperbolically com- paring their treatment to that of Jews during World War
II (Bart, 1998).
Be that as it
may, the cravat-wearing Hubbard himself suf- fered no such imagined
Holocaust, instead maintaining his own set of privileged, teenaged female “messengers.” Those cheerleader- beautiful blond
girls, vying for the geriatric Hubbard’s attention, had designed their own
uniform, consisting of hot pants, halter tops, bobbysox and platform sandals.
Their envied duties report- edly included washing Hubbard’s hair, giving him
massages, and helping him dress and undress (Miller,
1987).
“A man could get religion.”
Yet, the life
of a messenger was not all fun and estrogen- fuelled games:
[Hubbard] got mad at a messenger
once ... because she over- spent some money on an errand, so they took away
every- one’s supply of toilet paper for ten days (in Corydon
and Hubbard, 1998).
Nor was LRH’s
interest in the financial and anal activities of others limited to
pulse-quickening teenage girls:
Homosexuality is outlawed; Hubbard
insisted that the Emo- tional Tone Level of a homosexual is “covert hostility”:
they are backstabbers, each and every one (Atack,
1990).
“Ron’s” tolerance
for equality in other areas seems to have been no higher:
I don’t see that popular measures
... and democracy have done anything for Man but push him further into the mud
... democracy has given us inflation
and income tax (in Corydon and Hubbard, 1998).
In spite of
such demeaning from above, the reported attitude of devoted members toward their source of salvation is exactly
as one would expect:
Scientologists believe that their
survival as spiritual beings is
totally dependent upon remaining in good graces with the Church (Corydon and Hubbard, 1998).
[I]t was well rumored in Scientology that to leave with an in- complete level of auditing
could result in death within twelve
days (Wakefield, 1996).
In earlier
times, Hubbard’s dabbling in black magick with re- nowned chemist Jack Parsons
had caused no less than Aleister Crowley—the self-proclaimed “Beast 666”—to
remark:
Apparently Parsons and Hubbard or
somebody is producing a moonchild. I
get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idi- ocy of these louts (in Corydon and Hubbard, 1998).
Bringing a
welcomed level head to all of that, however, “Su- perman” Christopher Reeve
described (2002) his own experiences within Scientology, including his common-sense method of evaluat- ing their auditing procedures:
[M]y growing skepticism about
Scientology and my training as an actor
took over. With my eyes closed,
I gradually began to remember details from a
devastating past life experience that had happened in ancient Greece....
I could tell
that my auditor was deeply moved by my story and trying hard to maintain her
professional demean- or. I sensed that she was making a profound connection be-
tween guilt over the death of my father when I was a Greek warrior in a past
life and my relationship with my father in the present.
And that was
the end of my training as a Scientologist. My story was actually a slightly
modified account of an an- cient Greek myth. I didn’t expect my auditor
to be familiar
with Greek mythology; I was simply
relying on her ability, assisted by the E-meter, to discern the truth. The fact
that I got away with a blatant fabrication completely devalued my belief in the
process.
Others have
come to even less complimentary evaluations of Scientology. Indeed, years
earlier, in 1965, the Australian Board of Inquiry into Scientology had produced a report opining
that “Scien- tology is evil;
its techniques evil; its practice a serious threat to the community, medically,
morally and socially; and its adherents sadly deluded and often mentally ill”
(in Miller, 1987). The same report criticized the Hubbard
Association of Scientologists Interna- tional, created by Ron in London in 1952, as being
allegedly “the world’s largest organization of unqualified persons engaged in
the practice of dangerous techniques which masquerade as mental therapy” (in Miller, 1987). (Fellow science fiction writer
Isaac Asi- mov had earlier dismissed Hubbard’s Dianetics
as being “gibber- ish” [in Miller, 1987].
The “science of the mind” received no better reviews from Martin Gardner, in
his [1957] Fads and Fallacies in the Name
of Science.)
In a May, 1991,
cover story (Behar, 1991), Time magazine fur- ther described
Scientology as allegedly being “a hugely profitable global racket that survives
by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner.”
The following books have given
much additional disturbing de- tail as to the alleged nature of life within and around
Scientology:
·
Jon Atack (1990), A Piece of Blue Sky
·
Paulette Cooper (1971), The Scandal of Scientology. Also see her (1997)
diaries. After having been sued eighteen times by the Church, to get a
settlement Cooper reportedly “promised she would not republish the [former, Scandal] book and signed a statement
saying fifty-two passages in it were ‘misleading’” (Rudin and Rudin, 1980)
·
Russell Miller (1987), Bare-Faced Messiah
·
Robert Kaufman (1995), Inside Scientology/Dianetics
·
Cyril Vosper (1997), The Mind-Benders
·
George Malko (1970), Scientology: The Now Religion. Mal- ko’s
book was reportedly later “withdrawn by its publishers who also paid a legal
settlement” (Wallis, 1976)
·
Monica Pignotti (1989),
My Nine Lives in Scientology
·
Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. (1998),
L. Ron Hub- bard: Messiah or Madman?
·
Margery Wakefield (1991), Understanding Scientology; (1993), The
Road to Xenu; and her (1996)
autobiography, Testimony
·
Bob Penny (1993), Social Control
in Scientology
·
For more, see the www.factnet.org website The aforementioned Behar (1991) further alleged:
One of Hubbard’s
policies was that all perceived
enemies are
“fair game” and subject to being
“tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.” Those who criticize the
church—journalists, doc- tors, lawyers and even judges—often find themselves
en- gulfed in litigation, stalked by private eyes, framed for fic- tional
crimes, beaten up or threatened with death.
Others have made similar
claims:
The Church of Scientology is not
known for its willingness to take what it construes as criticism without
recourse. Indeed its record of litigation must surely be without parallel in
the modern world (Wallis, 1976).
Hubbard has stated, as if invoking a
Voodoo curse, that any- one rash enough
to take action against Scientology is guar-
anteeing unto himself an incurable
insanity followed by a painful death (Vosper, 1997).
After her first article on
Scientology, in 1968, [Paulette] Coo- per received a flood of death threats and
smear letters; her phone was bugged; lawsuits were filed against her; attempts
were made to break into her apartment; and she was framed for a bomb threat (Atack, 1990).
Los Angeles
Superior Court Judge Paul G. Breckenridge dis- closed his own disturbing impressions
of the group in the mid- 1980s:
The [Scientology] organization
clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be
a reflec- tion of its founder. The evidence portrays a man [i.e., Hub- bard]
who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history,
background and achievements. The writings and documents in evidence
additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice,
lust for power,
and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons
perceived by him to be dis- loyal or hostile (in Miller,
1987).
Justice Latey’s
opinion of the organization, as expressed in his 1984 London High Court ruling,
was no higher:
Scientology is both immoral and
socially obnoxious ... it is corrupt, sinister and dangerous (in Atack, 1990).
Likewise for Conway and Siegelman’s (1982) published view:
According to those who responded to
our survey ... Scientol- ogy’s may be the most debilitating set of rituals of
any [al- leged] cult in America.
After a survey of forty-eight
groups, Conway and Siegelman reported that former Scientologists had the
highest rate of violent outbursts, hallucinations, sexual dysfunction and
suicidal tendencies. They estimated that full recovery from Scientology
averaged at [nearly] 12.5 years (Atack, 1992).
More recently,
a wrongful-death lawsuit was brought
(and set- tled out of court in 2004) by the
estate of former member Lisa McPherson against
the Church of Scientology. For details,
see Ross
(2004b)
and www.lisamcpherson.org. For the alleged
negative ef- fects of participation in Scientology’s activities on other
devoted followers, see Chapter 21 of Paulette Cooper’s (1971) The Scandal of
Scientology, and Chapter 14 of Corydon and Hubbard (1998) for Cooper’s own story. Also, Chapter 22 of the same
latter book for Scientology’s alleged treatment of lawyer Michael Flynn—who has
since frequently represented Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self- Realization
Fellowship in their own legal concerns (Russell,
2001).
Hubbard himself
died in the mid-’80s. By the end, he had be- come a rather unhappy man, living
in a rather unhappy, Howard Hughes-like fashion—reportedly believing, at
various times, that his cooks were trying to poison him; and demanding that his
dirty clothes be washed thirteen times, in thirteen different buckets of clean
spring water, before he would wear them.
Psychiatrist Frank Gerbode, who
practiced Scientology for many years, feels that Hubbard was not schizophrenic,
but rather “manic with paranoid tendencies”.... However, Ger- bode suggests
that the best description is the lay diagnosis “loony” (Atack, 1990).
[T]he FBI did not take Hubbard
seriously, at one point mak- ing the notation “appears mental” in his file (Wakefield, 1991).
And yet, Bent
Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. (1998) have
equally claimed:
To be a critic of the Church or its
Founder is to be insane. Simple as that....
Labeling any dissident “psychotic” is commonplace in Scientology. This is mandated by
Hubbard’s written policies.
Good advice,
however, comes from—of all places—multiply re- habbed actor and pornography
aficionado Charlie Sheen, a former boyfriend
of Kelly Preston.
(Also, an aspiring
poet. “Luckily most of
it was written on smack, or it would all be religious fluffy stuff.”) For, when
asked about reported attempts by Scientologists to re- cruit him for their
cause, Sheen—who would surely have fully ap- preciated the hot pants and halter
tops of Hubbard’s blossoming “messengers”—is said to have replied:
“I have no involvement in that form of
silliness.”
CHAPTER XV
WERNER’S UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE
(est/FORUM/LANDMARK TRAINING)
WERNER ERHARD WAS BORN John Paul
Rosenberg. He took his new moniker on a cross-country plane trip, as a
combination of two names he read in an in-flight magazine:
quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg—developer of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle—and then-economics minister of West Germany, Ludwig
Erhard.
As to the man’s
character, the late Buckminster
Fuller effused in the New York Times (in February of 1979):
I have quite a few million people
who listen to me. And I say Werner Erhard is honest. He may prove
untrustworthy, and if he does then I’ll say so.
That
endorsement came, of course, from the same futurist who, only a few years earlier, had whole-heartedly endorsed the
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. At the time, Fuller and Erhard were splitting the
proceeds from a series of public “conversations” be- tween the two of them.
103
Erhard’s est
training had its roots in many other well-known therapies and disciplines.
Indeed, Mark Brewer (1975), in an arti- cle
for Psychology Today, found traces of
Zen, Scientology—which Erhard once followed—Dale Carnegie and gestalt therapy
in the core teachings of est (“Erhard Seminars Training”):
What the training is more than
anything else [is an] applica- tion of classic techniques in indoctrination and
mental condi- tioning worthy of Pavlov himself.
Yet, the
relatively low concentration of things “Eastern” re- portedly did not stop the
former used car salesman, Erhard, from pondering his own high position in the
cosmos:
“How do I know I’m not the
reincarnation of Jesus Christ?” Erhard once wondered of a friend (Pressman,
1993).
In other times,
Jim Jones asked himself the same question, coming to the conclusion that he was
exactly that reincarnation (Layton, 1998)—as well as having more recently been Vladimir Ily- ich Lenin. Wanna-be rock star and
alleged pedophile David Ko- resh, too—of Waco, Texas, i.e., Branch Davidian
infamy—believed himself to be Jesus Christ (England
and McCormick, 1993); as did Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate (Lalich, 2004).
One can,
however, always aim higher. Thus, in the autumn of 1977, as reported by Steven
Pressman in his (1993) Outrageous
Betrayal, during a beachside meeting of est seminar leaders in Monterey,
one participant got to his feet.
“The question in the room that
nobody is asking,” the man told Erhard solemnly, “is ‘Are you the [M]essiah?’”
The room grew
silent as Erhard looked out to the curi- ous faces of some of his most devoted
disciples. After a few moments he replied, “No, I am who sent him [i.e., God].”
Marshall
Applewhite’s spiritual partner, Bonnie Lu Nettles, likewise believed herself to
be an incarnation of God the Father (Lalich, 2004).
Given reported
feelings such as the above among the formerly encyclopedia-selling
“God”—Erhard—and his seminar trainers, it is
hardly surprising that alleged trainee horror stories such as the following
should surface:
“Most of the people I’ve seen at our
clinic—and they come in after the training in fairly substantial numbers—have
suf- fered reactions that range from moderately bad to dreadful,” the executive
director of New York City’s Lincoln Institute
for Psychotherapy reported in 1978. “They are confused and jarred, and the same pattern—elation, depression, feelings of
omnipotence followed by feelings of helplessness—are re- peated over and over
again”....
In March 1977
the [American Journal of Psychiatry]
published the first of two articles ... that described five pa- tients who had
[allegedly] developed psychotic symptoms, in- cluding paranoia, uncontrollable
mood swings, and delusions in the wake of taking the est training (Pressman,
1993).
David Shy (2004)
lists additional relevant published concerns. Erhard himself has reportedly
“hotly denied any damaging ef-
fects from the est training” (Pressman, 1993).
Early graduates
of Erhard’s four-day est seminars included John “Windy Kansas Wheat
Field” Denver—who wanted
to give up his singing career to become an est trainer. Also, Diana
Ross, as- tronaut Buzz Aldrin, and Yoko Ono. More recently, Ted Danson, Valerie
Harper, Roy “Jaws” Scheider and numerous other Holly- wood stars have taken
Erhard’s courses.
At any rate, as
if to argue that the harsh discipline of any
“holy man” directed toward his followers simply begins a cycle of abuse
with future generations of disciples, we have the following allegation:
Those who worked closest to Erhard
often witnessed his own tirades and yelling bouts, and sometimes felt free to
mirror his own behavior when they were in charge (Pressman, 1993).
Erhard’s home life may have taken tragic turns as well. For,
Werner’s daughter Deborah
once alleged that he had
coerced one of his older daughters
... into having sexual in- tercourse with him in a hotel room they were sharing
during one of his frequent out-of-town trips (Pressman, 1993).*
“Thank you for sharing.”
* Erhard has denied all allegations
of abuse. Jane Self’s (1992) 60 Minutes
and the Assassination of Werner Erhard has further offered a staunch
defense of Erhard against the uncomplimentary picture of him painted by the media. There, she alleges that the
orchestration of his downfall can be found within the Church of Scientology. In
that same book, Erhard’s
daughters are quoted
as retracting their
previous allegations of improprieties on his part, having supposedly made them under
duress.
Dr. Self does
not address the alleged negative effects of Erhard’s seminars on their most
vulnerable participants nor, in my opinion, convincingly refute Erhard’s
reportedly messianic view of himself. (Curiously, though, both she and Werner’s friend Mark Kamin refer to Erhard’s public downfall as his
being “crucified.”) Nor, unlike Press- man (1993), does she delve into the
serious, alleged behind-the-scenes issues with the Hunger Project. (That
project was Erhard’s failed at- tempt to wipe out starvation by the year 2000.)
Instead, she simply repeats the “public relations” line on that topic.
CHAPTER XVI
COCKROACH YOGA
(YOGI BHAJAN)
YOGI BHAJAN WAS THE SIKH FOUNDER of
3HO, the nonprofit “Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization,” headquartered in Los
Ange- les.
Born in the
Punjab, he worked as a customs agent in New Delhi before emigrating with his
wife to North America in 1968, at age thirty-nine, to teach kundalini and white
tantric yoga there.
White tantra is
used “to purify and uplift the being,” as op- posed to black, which is “for
mental control of other people,” or
red, which is “for sexual energy and senses” or for demonstrating mira- cles (S. Khalsa, 1996).
Yogi Bhajan has said that kundalini
yoga will be the yoga of the Aquarian Age and will be practiced for the next
five thousand years (in Singh, 1998a).
Guru Terath Singh Khalsa, who is
[Bhajan’s] lawyer and spokesman, says that Bhajan is “the equivalent of the pope”
(Time, 1977).
Yogi Bhajan is unique among
spiritual teachers because he is also
the Mahan Tantric of this era. This means that he is the only living master
of white tantric
yoga in the world,
107
since there can only be one on the
planet at any given time. He is a world teacher, a very special instrument whom
God has appointed and anointed to awaken the millions of sleep- ing souls on
this planet (S. Khalsa, 1996).
The idea that
Bhajan is actually the “Mahan Tantric of this era” via any recognized lineage,
however, has been questioned by some of his detractors.
In any case,
Madonna, Rosanna Arquette, Melissa Etheridge, Cindy Crawford, Courtney Love and
David Duchovny have all re- portedly been influenced by Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa,
one of Yogi Bhajan’s devoted followers (Ross, 2002).
As of 1980, Bhajan claimed a quarter
of a million devotees worldwide, including around 2500 in his ashrams. The yogi
himself was reported to live in a mansion in Los Angeles.
The late (d.
October, 2004) Bhajan’s brand of Sikhism has ac- tually been rejected by the
orthodox Sikh community, but that seems to derive more from him including
elements of (Hindu) kun- dalini yoga in it than for any concern about the
teachings or prac- tices themselves.
* * *
As a Master, as a yogi, Yogi Bhajan
always sees women— and men—from a cosmic viewpoint. He never forgets that we
are primarily souls, paying our karma and learning our les- sons in these two
different forms....
“I believe that
so long as those born of woman do not re- spect woman, there shall be no peace
on Earth” [Bhajan has said] (S. Khalsa, 1996).
The particular
brand of “respect” offered to women within Bhajan’s community, however, may
have stopped somewhat short of any enlightened ideal, as one of his female
devotees explained:
When I moved into the Philadelphia ashram back in the ’70s, I was handed a little pink book
called Fascinating Woman- hood.... [I]t
is a practical how-to manual on marriage from the woman’s point of view,
written by a Mormon. It is the philosophical opposite of feminism, completely
committed to the belief that the spiritual fulfillment of women is achieved
through unquestioning service and obedience to men....
In most ways
3HOers no longer play such extreme sex roles. It has been a very long time
since I have seen a male head of an ashram lounging around while sweet young things ply him with foot massages (K. Khalsa, 1990).
Of course, that
implies that there was a time when desirable young women in the ashrams would give foot massages to the highly
placed men there.
In a series of lectures entitled
“Man to Man,” Yogi Bhajan explains women’s nature to the males: “One day she is
very bright and charming and after a couple days she is totally dumb and
non-communicative. This is called the ‘normal woman mood.’” And because women
fluctuate so much, “a female needs constant social security and constant
leader- ship ... when you are not the leader, she is not satisfied” (Naman, 1980).
Such “fifteenth
century” (i.e., when the Sikh religion was founded by Guru Nanak) attitudes
toward “the fairer sex,” though, would invariably have an alleged flip side:
Bhajan has repeatedly been accused
of being a womanizer. Colleen Hoskins, who worked seven months at his New Mex-
ico residence, reports that men are scarcely seen there. He is served, she says,
by a coterie of as many as fourteen women, some of whom attend his baths, give
him group massages, and take turns spending the night in his room while his
wife sleeps elsewhere (Time, 1977).
When the same
Ms. Hoskins became disillusioned and decided to leave the 3HO group, she was allegedly told by
Bhajan that “she would be responsible for a nuclear holocaust” (Naman, 1980).
Perhaps in
anticipation of such calamities, Bhajan is reported to have suggested (in Singh, 1998):
We should have a place, which should
sustain five thousand children, five thousand women, and one thousand men.
Of course, if
we have learned one thing from Dr.
Strangelove, it is that such
women would have to be chosen for their “breeding potential”....
*
* *
The proper attitude
toward the guru,
within 3HO as elsewhere,
was explained by Bhajan himself:
Advice should be righteous, your
mind should be righteous, and your advice and activity to that advice should be
right- eous. If a guru says, “Get up
in the morning and praise God,” will you do it?
Answer: Yes.
Question: If the guru says “Get
up in the morning and steal,” will
you do it?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Is everything the guru says righteous?
Answer: Otherwise he is not a guru.
Question: Is it righteous to
steal?
Answer: Perhaps he is testing, who
knows. What is a guru? A guru is an
unknown infinity of you, otherwise another hu- man being cannot be a guru to
you (Bhajan, 1977).
Note that this
quotation is not taken out of context:
it is a full entry in the “Relationship” chapter of the indicated book by Yogi Bhajan.
The alleged result
of such attitudes is not altogether surpris-
ing:
The yogi makes money from businesses
run by his yoga dis- ciples, but was sued for “assault, battery, fraud and
deceit.” He decided to settle out of court.
One of Bhajan’s
top leaders and yoga enthusiasts was busted for smuggling guns and marijuana
and then sen- tenced to prison (Ross, 2003c).
And
what was Bhajan’s
reported response to such downturns
of fortune?
The critics didn’t spare Jesus Christ, they didn’t spare Bud- dha,
and they don’t spare me (in Naman, 1980).
* * *
At the 1974 3HO Teachers
Meeting in Santa Cruz, New Mexico,
Yogi Bhajan had allegedly predicted:
In another ten years hospitals will
have iron windows and people will try to jump out. There will be tremendous
sick- ness. There will be unhappiness and tragedy on Earth.
Your dead
bodies will lie on these roads, your children will be orphans, and nobody will
kick them, rather, people will eat them alive! There will be tremendous
insanity. That is the time we are going to face (in Singh,
1998).
And from the same sage in 1977 (reported in Singh, 2000):
Now you say there is no life on
Mars? Mars is populated ... it is over-populated. The rate of production and sensuality is so heavy, and the
beings—they grow so fast that they have to go
and make war on all the other planets.
There are
beings on Jupiter. There is a hierarchy. Their energy and our energy interexchange
[sic] in the astral body and it is
highly effective.
* * *
For
a long time I didn’t
worry much about
the few odd people
who left 3HO. I hadn’t liked them much when they were in 3HO so it seemed
reasonable to me that, after forsaking the truth, they had all become pimps,
prostitutes and drug deal- ers, like the rumors implied (K. Khalsa, 1990).
But again, Bhajan himself saw it all
coming:
[Yogi Bhajan] warned all of us who
were to become teachers that, “You will be tested in three areas: money, sex, or power
—possibly in all of them.” It is a
great responsibility and privilege to teach kundalini yoga. It is said that if
a teacher betrays the sacred trust placed in him, he will be reborn as a
cockroach! (S. Khalsa, 1996).
Kundalini yoga. Tantric sex yoga.
Pimp yoga. Prostitute yoga (“3-HOs”). Drug-dealer yoga. Gun yoga. Nuclear
holocaust yoga.
Cockroach yoga.
CHAPTER XVII
A WILD AND CRAZY WISDOM GUY
(CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA)
CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA, BORN IN 1939, is
the first of the “crazy wisdom” masters whose effect on North American
spirituality we will be considering.
The night of my conception my mother
had a very significant dream that a being had entered her body with a flash of light; that year flowers bloomed in the
neighborhood al- though it was still winter, to the surprise of the inhabi- tants....
I was born in
the cattle byre [shed]; the birth came eas- ily. On that day a rainbow was seen
in the village, a pail supposed to contain water was unaccountably found full
of milk, while several of my mother’s relations dreamt that a lama was visiting
their tents (Trungpa, 1977).
As the eleventh
incarnation of the Trungpa Tulku, the milk- fed sage was raised from his
childhood to be the supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries in eastern Tibet.
112
In Trungpa’s
tradition, a tulku is “someone who
reincarnates with the memories
and values of previous lives intact” (Butterfield,
1994). Of an earlier, fourth incarnation of that same Trungpa Tul- ku
(Trungpa Künga-gyaltzen) in the late
fourteenth century, it has been asserted:
[H]e was looked upon as an
incarnation of Maitreya Bodhi- sattva, destined to be the Buddha of the next
World Cycle, also of Dombhipa a great Buddhist siddha (adept) and of Mi- larepa (Trungpa,
1977).
Having been
enthroned in Tibet as heir to the lineages of Mi- larepa and Padmasambhava,
Trungpa left the country for India in 1959, fleeing the Chinese Communist
takeover. There, by appoint- ment of the Dalai Lama, he served as the spiritual
advisor for the Young Lamas Home School in Dalhousie, until 1963 (Shambhala, 2003).
From India
Chögyam went to England, studying comparative religion and psychology at Oxford
University. (A later student of Trungpa’s, Al Santoli,
“suggests that the CIA may have had a hand in getting the eleventh Trungpa into
Oxford” [Clark, 1980].) He further caused quite a stir in clashing with another
tulku adver- sary (Akong)
of his who, like Trungpa
himself, had designs
on lead- ing their lineage in
the West.
To
the amazement of a small
circle of local helpers and to the gross embarrassment of the powers
that sent them to Eng- land, the two honorable tulkus entered into heated argu- ments and publicly exchanged
hateful invectives. In an early edition of his book, Born in Tibet, Trungpa called Akong par- anoid and scheming
(Lehnert, 1998).
In any case,
Trungpa and Akong went on to found the first Western-hemisphere Tibetan
Buddhist meditation center, in Scot- land, which community was visited by the
American poet Robert Bly in 1971.
It was, Trungpa remembers, “a forward step. Nevertheless, it was not entirely satisfying, for the
scale of activity was small, and the
people who did come to participate seemed to be slightly missing the point”
(Fields, 1992).
That same
center later became of interest to the police as they investigated allegations
of drug abuse there. Trungpa, not himself prone to “missing the point,” avoided
that bust by hiding in a sta- ble.
The Buddhist
nun Tenzin Palmo (in Mackenzie, 1999) related
her own experiences with the young Chögyam in England, upon their first meeting
in 1962. There, in finding his attentive hands working their way up her skirt
in the middle of afternoon tea and cucumber sandwiches, Trungpa received a
stiletto heel to his san- daled holy feet. His later “smooth line” to her, in repeated
attempts at seduction beyond that initial meeting/groping, included the
claim that Palmo had “swept him off his monastic feet.” That, in spite of the
fact that he “had women since [he] was thirteen,” and already had a son.
In 1969 Chögyam
experienced a tragic automobile accident which left him paralyzed on the left
side of his body. The car had careened into a joke shop (seriously); Trungpa
had been driving drunk at the time (Das, 1997),
to the point of blacking out at the wheel (Trungpa,
1977).
Note, now, that
Trungpa did not depart from Tibet for India until age twenty, and did not leave
India for his schooling in Eng- land until four years later. Thus, eleven years
of his having “had women” were enacted within surrounding traditional Tibetan
and northern Indian attitudes toward acceptable behavior (on the part of monks,
etc.). Indeed, according to the son referenced above, both his mother and
Trungpa were under vows of celibacy, in Tibet, at the time of their union (Dykema, 2003). Of the three hundred monks
entrusted to him when he was enthroned as supreme abbot of the Surmang
monasteries, Trungpa himself (1977) remarked
that
one hundred and seventy were bhikshus (fully ordained monks), the
remainder being shramaneras (novices)
and young upsaka students who had
already taken the vow of celibacy.
Obviously, then, Trungpa’s (Sarvastivadin) tradition was not a
“monastic” one without celibacy vows,
as is the case with Zen.
Further,
Trungpa himself did not formally give up his monas- tic vows to work as a “lay
teacher” until sometime after his car
ac- cident in England. This, then, is another clear instance of demon- stration that traditional agrarian society places no more iron-clad
constraints on the behavior of any
“divine sage” than does its post- modern, Western counterpart.
Trungpa may
have “partied harder” in Europe and the States, but he was already breaking
plenty of rules, without censure, back in Tibet and India. Indeed, one could
probably reasonably argue that, proportionately, he broke as many social and
cultural rules, with as little censure, in Tibet and India as he later did in
Amer- ica. (For blatant
examples of what insignificant discipline is visited upon even
violent rule-breakers in Tibetan Buddhist society even today, consult
Lehnert’s [1998] Rogues in Robes.) Further,
Trungpa (1977) did not begin to act
as anyone’s guru until age fourteen, but had women since he was thirteen. He
was thus obviously breaking that vow of celibacy with impunity both before and
after assuming “God-like” guru status, again in agrarian 1950s Tibet.
In 1970, the
recently married Trungpa and his sixteen-year- old, dressage-fancying English
wife, Diana, established their per- manent residence in the United States. He
was soon teaching at the University of Colorado, and in time accumulated around
1500 disciples. Included among those was folksinger Joni Mitchell, who visited
the tulku three times, and whose song
“Refuge of the Roads”
(from the 1976 album Hejira) contains
an opening verse about the guru. Contemporary transpersonal psychologist and
au- thor John Welwood, member of the Board of Editors of
The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, is also a long-time
follower of Trung- pa.
In 1974,
Chögyam founded the accredited Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado—the first
tantric university in America. In- structors and guests at Naropa have included
psychiatrist R. D. Laing, Gregory Bateson, Ram Dass and Allen Ginsberg—after
whom the university library was later named. (Ginsberg had ear- lier spent time
with Swami Muktananda [Miles, 1989].) Also, Marianne Faithfull, avant-garde composer
John Cage, and William
“Naked Lunch” Burroughs, who had earlier become enchanted (1974, 1995) and then
disenchanted with L. Ron Hubbard’s Scien- tology. Plus, the infinitely tedious
Tibetan scholar and translator Herbert V. Guenther, whose writings, even by dry
academic stan- dards, could function well as a natural sedative.
Bhagavan Das (1997) related his own, more lively experiences, while teaching Indian music
for three months at Naropa in the ’70s:
The party energy around [Trungpa]
was compelling. In fact, that’s basically what Naropa was: a huge blowout
party, twenty-four hours a day....
I was in a very
crazed space and very lost. One day, af- ter having sex with three different
women, I couldn’t get out of bed. I was traumatized. It was all too much.
Jack Kornfield
offered a less “traumatic” recounting of his own days lecturing there, being invited
to teach after he and Trungpa had met at a (where else) cocktail party in 1973:
We all had this romantic, idealistic
feeling that we were at the beginning of a consciousness movement that was
really going to transform the world (in Schwartz,
1996).
Befitting the
leader of such a world-changing effort, in 1974 Trungpa was confirmed as a
Vajracarya, or a “spiritual master of the highest level,” by His Holiness the
Karmapa Lama, during the latter’s first visit to the West (Trungpa, 1977).
* * *
The practice of “crazy wisdom” itself rests upon the following the-
ory:
[I]f a bodhisattva is completely
selfless, a completely open person, then he will act according to openness,
will not have to follow rules; he will simply fall into patterns. It is impos-
sible for the bodhisattva to destroy or harm other people, be- cause he embodies transcendental generosity. He has opened himself completely and so does not discriminate between this and that. He
just acts in accordance with what is. [H]is
mind is so precise, so accurate that
he never makes mistakes [italics
added]. He never runs into unexpected problems, never creates chaos in a
destructive way (Trungpa, 1973).
[O]nce you receive transmission and
form the [guru-disciple] bond of samaya, you
have committed yourself to the teacher as guru, and from then on, the guru can
do no wrong, no matter what. It follows that if you obey the guru in all things, you can do no wrong either. This
is the basis of Osel Tendzin’s [Trungpa’s eventual successor] teaching that “if
you keep your samaya, you cannot make
a mistake.” He was not deviating into his own megalomania when he said this,
but repeating the most essential
idea of mainstream Vajra- yana [i.e., Tantric Buddhism] (Butterfield, 1994).
Q [student]: What if you feel the
necessity for a violent act in order ultimately to do good for a person?
A [Trungpa]: You just do it (Trungpa, 1973).
A perfect example of going with
energy, of the positive wild yogi quality, was the actual transmission of
enlightenment from Tilopa to [his disciple] Naropa. Tilopa removed his san- dal
and slapped Naropa in the face (Trungpa, 1973).
We could, of
course, have learned as much from the Three Stooges.
Q [student]: Must we have a spiritual friend [e.g., a
guru] be- fore we can expose ourselves, or can we just open ourselves to the situations of life?
A [Trungpa]: I think you need
someone to watch you do it, because then it will seem more real to you. It is
easy to un- dress in a room with no one else around, but we find it diffi- cult
to undress ourselves in a room full of people (Trungpa,
1973).
Yes, there was
plenty of undressing. At the Halloween cos- tume party during an annual seminar
in the autumn of 1975, for example:
A woman is stripped naked,
apparently at Trungpa’s joking command, and hoisted into the air by [his]
guards, and passed around—presumably in fun, although the woman does not think so (Marin, 1995).
The pacifist
poet William Merwin and his wife, Dana, were at- tending the same three-month
retreat, but made the mistake of keeping to themselves within a crowd mentality
where that was viewed as offensive “egotism” on their part. Consequently, their
perceived aloofness had been resented all summer by the other community members
... and later categorized as “resistance” by Trungpa himself.
Thus, Merwin
and his companion showed up briefly for the aforementioned Halloween party, danced only with each other, and then went back to their room.
Trungpa,
however, insisted through a messenger that they re- turn and rejoin the party.
In response, William and his wife locked themselves in their room, turned off
the lights ... and soon found themselves on the receiving end of a group of angry, drunken spiri- tual seekers, who proceeded to cut
their telephone line, kick in the door (at Trungpa’s command) and break a
window (Miles, 1989).
Panicked, but
discerning that broken glass is mightier than the pen, the poet defended
himself by smashing bottles over sev- eral of the attacking disciples, injuring
a friend of his. Then, morti- fied and giving up the
struggle, he and his wife were dragged from the room.
[Dana] implored that someone call
the police, but to no avail. She was insulted by one of the women in the
hallway and a man threw wine in her face (Schumacher, 1992).
And then, at
the feet of the wise guru, after Trungpa had “told Merwin that he had heard the
poet was making a lot of trouble”:
[Merwin:] I reminded him that we
never promised to obey him. He said, “Ah, but you asked to come” (Miles, 1989).
An argument ensued, during which
Trungpa insulted Mer- win’s Oriental wife with racist remarks [in return for
which she called him a “Nazi”] and threw a glass of saké in the poet’s face (Feuerstein, 1992).
Following that
noble display of high realization, Trungpa had the couple forcibly stripped by
his henchmen—against the protests of both Dana and one of the few courageous
onlookers, who was punched in the face and called a “son of a bitch” by Trungpa
him- self for his efforts.
“Guards dragged me off and pinned me
to the floor,” [Dana] wrote in her account of the incident. “I fought and called to
friends, men and women whose faces I
saw in the crowd, to call the police.
No one did. [One
devotee] was stripping
me
while others held me down. Trungpa
was punching [him] in the head, urging him to do it faster. The rest of my
clothes were torn off.”
“See?” said
Trungpa. “It’s not so bad, is it?” Merwin and Dana stood naked, holding each
other, Dana sobbing (Miles, 1989).
Finally, others
stripped voluntarily and Trungpa, apparently satisfied, said “Let’s dance”
(Marin, 1995). “And so they did.”
And that,
kiddies, is what they call “authentic Tibetan Bud- dhism.”
Don’t let your
parents find out: Soon they won’t even let you say your prayers before bedtime,
for fear that it might be a “gate- way” to the hard-core stuff.
The scandal
ensuing from the above humiliation became known as, in all seriousness, “the
great Naropa poetry wars.” It was, indeed, commemorated in the identical title
of a must-read (though sadly out of print) book by Tom Clark (1980). If you
need to be cured of the idea that
Trungpa was anything but a “power- hungry ex-monarch” alcoholic fool, that is
the book to read. (Inter- estingly, a poll taken by the Naropa student
newspaper in the late ’70s disclosed that nine of twenty-six students at their
poetry school regarded Trungpa as being either a “total fraud” or very near to
the same.)
For his
journalistic efforts, Clark was rewarded with “lots of hang-up phone calls,”
presumably as an intimidation tactic on the part of Trungpa’s loyal followers.
And incredibly,
even after enduring the above reported abuse, Merwin and Dana chose to remain
at the seminary for Trungpa’s subsequent Vajrayana lectures.
At any rate,
Chögyam’s own (1977) presentation of the
goings- on at his “seminars,” even well after
the Merwin incident, pre- dictably paled in comparison to their realities:
I initiated the annual Vajradhatu
Seminary, a three-month intensive practice and study retreat for mature
students. The first of these
seminaries, involving eighty students, took place ... in the autumn of 1973.
Periods of all-day sitting meditation alternated with a study programme
methodically progressing through the three yanas
of Buddhist teaching, Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana.
“Mature,
methodical progression,” however, does not quite capture the mood earlier
expressed by the traumatized Das or the involuntarily stripped Merwin and his
wife.
How then is one
to understand Chögyam’s “extra-curricular” activities within the context of
such Vajrayana teachings?
The notorious case involving Trungpa
... was given all sorts of high
explanations by his followers, none of whom got the correct one: Trungpa made
an outrageous, inexcusable, and completely stupid mistake, period (Wilber, 1983).
Trungpa’s own
insistence, however, was again always that he and his enlightened ilk “never
make mistakes.” (The explicit quote to that effect, above, is from 1973—a full decade prior to Wilber’s attempted,
and wholly failed, explanation.) Rather, the day follow- ing the Merwin “incident,” Trungpa simply posted
an open letter
to everyone at the retreat, effectively explaining his previous night’s
behavior as part of his “teaching.” No apology was offered by him, and he certainly did not regard himself as having
made any “mis- take” whatsoever (Marin, 1995). Even in the late ’70s, when
Allen Ginsberg asked Trungpa, “was it a mistake?
He said, ‘Nope’” (in Clark, 1980). Ginsberg himself, too, “said Trungpa may
have been guilty of indiscretion, but he had not
been wrong in the way he had behaved”
(Schumacher, 1992). And indeed, any disciple who might ever question the stated
infallibility of such a guru would again only
be demonstrating his own disloyalty. The only “option” for any
obedient follower is then, quite obviously, to find a “high explana- tion” for
the activities.
“I was wrong,” Trungpa might have
said. Or, “he was wrong,” his
disciples might have said. But they cannot say such things. It would interfere
too much with the myth [of Trungpa’s supernatural enlightenment] they have
chosen to believe....
I think back to
a conversation I recently had with the director of Naropa’s summer academic program. [W]hen, in
the course of the conversation, I asked him whether Trungpa can make a mistake, he
answered: “You know, a student has to believe his master can make no mistake.
Sometimes Trungpa may do something I don’t understand. But I must believe what
he does is always for the best” (Marin, 1995).
In 1978, the
emotionally involved Allen Ginsberg was con- fronted with the suggestion that
the obedience of Trungpa’s follow- ers in the “Merwin incident” might be
compared to that of partici- pants in the Jonestown mass suicides. He then gave
his own heat- ed, and utterly irrational, analysis:
In the middle of that scene, [for Dana] to yell “call the police”
—do you realize how vulgar that was? The wisdom of the East being
unveiled, and she’s
going “call the police!” I mean,
shit! Fuck that shit! Strip ‘em naked, break down the door!
Anything—symbolically (in Clark, 1980).
Yes. “Symbolically.”
Further,
regarding Wilber’s intimation that the guru’s actions were an isolated
“mistake”: When a former resident of Trungpa’s community was asked, in 1979, whether
the “Merwin incident”
was a characteristic happening, or a singular occurrence, she respond-
ed (in Clark, 1980):
It is a typical incident, it is not
an isolated example. At every seminary, as far as I know, there
was a confrontation involv- ing violence.
In any case, the regarding of such actions
as Chögyam’s versus Merwin, as being simple
“mistakes,” certainly could not explain away the reported premeditated means by
which disciples were kept in line within Trungpa’s community:
We were admonished ... not to talk
about our practice. “May I shrivel up
instantly and rot,” we vowed, “if I ever discuss these teachings with anyone
who has not been initiated into them by a qualified master.” As if this were
not enough, Trungpa told us that if we ever tried to leave the Vajrayana, we
would suffer unbearable, subtle, continuous anguish, and disasters would pursue
us like furies....
To be part of
Trungpa’s inner circle, you had to take a vow
never to reveal
or even discuss some of the things
he did. This personal secrecy
is common with gurus, especially in Vajrayana Buddhism. It is also common in
the dysfunctional family systems of alcoholics and sexual abusers. This inner
circle secrecy puts up an almost insurmountable barrier to a healthy skeptical
mind....
[T]he vow of silence
means that you cannot get near him until you have already given up your
own perception of en- lightenment and committed yourself to his (Butterfield, 1994).
The traditional
Vajrayana teachings on the importance of loy- alty to the guru are no less
categorical:
Breaking tantric samaya [i.e., leaving one’s guru] is
more harmful than breaking other vows. It is like falling from an airplane
compared to falling from a horse (Tulku Thondup, in [Panchen and Wangyi, 1996]).
In many texts, the consequences of
breaking with one’s guru are told in graphic terms, for it is believed that,
once having left a guru, a disciple’s spiritual progress “comes to an abso-
lute end” because “he never again meets with a spiritual master,” and he is
subject to “endless wandering in the lower realms.” In the case of disrespect
for the guru, it is said in the texts
that if the disciple “comes to despise his Guru, he encounters many problems in
the same life and then experi- ences a violent death” (Campbell, 1996, quoting
from [Dhar- gyey, 1974]).
Such
constraints on the disciple place great power into the hands of the
guru-figure—power which Trungpa, like countless others before and after him,
was not shy about exercising and pre- serving.
[Trungpa] was protected by
bodyguards known as the Vajra Guard, who wore blue blazers and received specialized
train- ing that included haiku composition and flower arranging. On one occasion, to test a student guard’s
alertness, Trungpa hurled
himself from a staircase, expecting to be caught. The guard was inattentive,
and Trungpa landed on his head, re- quiring a brief visit to the hospital
(Miles, 1989).
We could, of
course, have learned as much from Inspector Clouseau.
Or, expressed in haiku
(if not in flower arranging):
Hopped up on saké
I throw myself
down the stairs No one to catch me
I was scolded by one of his
disciples for laughing at Trungpa. He was a nut. But they were very
offended....
He had women
bodyguards in black dresses and high heels packing automatics standing in a
circle around him while they served saké and
invited me over for a chat. It was bizarre (Gary Snyder, in [Downing, 2001]).
Interestingly, Trungpa
considered the SFZC’s
Shunryu Suzuki to be his
“spiritual father,” while Suzuki considered the former to be “like my son” (in Chadwick, 1999).
* * *
There is a actually a very easy way
to tell whether or not any “sage’s” “crazy wisdom” treatment of others is
really a “skillful means,” employed to enlighten the people toward whom it is
di- rected.
Consider that
we would not attempt to evaluate whether a person is a hypochondriac, for
example, when he is in the hospital, diagnosed with pneumonia or worse, and
complaining about that. Rather, hypochondria shows when a person is certified
to be per- fectly healthy, but still worries neurotically that every little
pain may be an indication of a serious illness.
We would
likewise not attempt to evaluate any author’s po- lemics in situations where
the “righteous anger” may have been provoked, and may be justifiable as an
attempt to “awaken” the people at whom it is directed, or even just to give
them a “taste of their own medicine.” If we can find the same polemic being
thrown around in contexts where it was clearly unprovoked, however, we may be
certain that there is more to the author’s motivations than such claimed
high-minded ideals. That is, we may be confident that he is doing it for his own benefit, in blowing off steam,
or sim- ply enjoying dissing others whose ideas he finds threatening. In short,
such unprovoked polemics would give us strong reason to believe that the author
is not being honest with himself regarding the supposedly noble basis of his
own anger.
We would not
attempt to evaluate the “skillful means” by which any claimed “sage” puts his
followers into psychological binds, etc., in their native guru-disciple
contexts, where such ac- tions may be
justified. Rather, we would instead look at how the guru-figure interacts with
others in situations where his hypocriti- cal or allegedly abusive actions
cannot be excused as attempts to awaken them. If we find the same reported
abusive behaviors in his interactions
with non-disciples as we find in his interactions with his close followers, the
most generous position is to “subtract” the “baseline” of the non-disciple
interactions from the guru- disciple ones. If the alleged “skillful means” (of
anger and reported “Rude Boy” abuse) are present equally in both sets, they
cancel out, and were thus never “skillful” to begin with.
Rather, they were
simply the transplanting of
pre-existing despicable behaviors into a
context in which they may appear to be acceptable.
In the present
context, then, since Akong was never one of Trungpa’s disciples, Chögyam’s poor
behavior toward the former cannot be excused as any attempted “skillful means”
of awakening him. Merwin and his wife were likewise not disciples of Trungpa.
Thus, his disciplining of them for not joining the Halloween party arguably
provides another example of the guru humiliating others only for his own twisted enjoyment, not for their
spiritual good.
We will find
good use for this “contextual comparison” method when evaluating the behaviors
of many other “crazy wisdom” or “Rude Boy” gurus and their supporters, in the
coming chapters.
* * *
Allen [Ginsberg] asked Trungpa why
he drank so much. Trungpa explained he hoped to determine the illumination of American drunkenness. In the United States,
he said, alco- hol was the main drug, and he wanted to use his acquired
knowledge of drunkenness as a source of wisdom (Schumach- er, 1992).
[Trungpa’s] health had begun to
fail. He spent nearly a year and a half in a semicoma, nearly dying on a couple
of occa- sions, before finally succumbing to a heart attack (Schu- macher,
1992).
Before he died of acute alcoholism
in 1987, Trungpa ap- pointed an American acolyte named Thomas Rich, also known
as Osel Tendzin, as his successor. Rich, a married fa- ther of four, died of
AIDS in 1990 amid published reports that
he had had unprotected sex with [over a hundred] male and female students
without telling them of his illness (Hor- gan,
2003a).
Tendzin offered to explain his
behavior at a meeting which I attended. Like all of his talks, this was considered a teaching of dharma,
and donations were solicited and expected (But-
terfield, 1994).
Having forked
over the requisite $35 “offering,” Butterfield was treated to Tendzin’s dubious
explanation:
In response to close questioning by
students, he first swore us to
secrecy (family secrets again), and then said that Trungpa had requested him to
be tested for HIV in the early 1980s and told him to keep quiet about the
positive result. Tendzin had asked Trungpa what he should do if students wanted
to have sex with him, and Trungpa’s reply was that as long as he did his
Vajrayana purification practices, it did not matter, because they would not get
the disease. Tend- zin’s answer, in short, was that he had obeyed the instruc-
tions of his guru. He said we must not get trapped in the du- alism of good and
evil, there has never been any stain, our anger is the compassion of the guru,
and we must purify all obstacles that prevent us from seeing the world as a
sacred mandala of buddhas and bodhisattvas.
Yet, in spite
of that, and well after all of those
serious prob- lems in behavior had become widely known, we still have this un-
tenable belief being voiced, by none other than Ken Wilber (1996):
“Crazy wisdom” occurs in a very strict
ethical atmosphere.
If all of the
above was occurring within a “very strict ethical atmosphere,” however, one
shudders to think of what horrors an unethical
atmosphere might unleash. Indeed, speaking of one of the unduly admired individuals whom we shall meet later, an
anonymous poster with much more sense rightly made the follow- ing self-evident
point:
One problem with the whole idea of
the “crazy-wise” teacher is that [Adi] Da can claim to embody anyone or anything, en- gage in any sort of ethical
gyration at all, and, regardless of disciples’ reactions, Da can simply claim
his action was moti- vated as “another teaching.” He thus places himself in a
po- sition where he is utterly immune
from any ethical judgment (in Bob, 2000;
italics added).
More plainly,
there can obviously be no such thing
as a “strict ethical atmosphere” in any “crazy wisdom” environment.
But perhaps
Trungpa and Tendzin—a former close disciple of Satchidananda, who was actually
in charge of the latter’s Integral Yoga Institute in the early ’70s (Fields,
1992)—had simply cor- rupted that traditional “atmosphere” for their own uses?
Sadly, no:
Certain journalists, quoting
teachers from other Buddhist sects, have implied that Trungpa did not teach
real Bud- dhism but a watered-down version for American consump- tion, or that
his teaching was corrupted by his libertine out- look. After doing Vajrayana
practices, reading texts on them by Tibetan authorities, and visiting Buddhist
centers in the United States and Europe, I was satisfied that this allega- tion
is untrue. The practices taught in Vajradhatu are as genuinely Buddhist as
anything in the Buddhist world....
Dilgo Khyentse
Rinpoche, after the Tendzin scandal, in-
sisted to Vajradhatu students that Trungpa had given them authentic dharma, and
they should continue in it exactly as he had prescribed (Butterfield, 1994; italics added).
Dilgo Khyentse
Rinpoche—“Rinpoche” being a title meaning “Precious One”—was head of the oldest
Nyingma or “Ancient Ones” School of
Tibetan Buddhism from 1987 until his death in 1991.
Even with all
that, Peter Marin (1995)—a non-Buddhist writ- er who taught for several months
at Naropa in 1977—still validly observed that the activities at Naropa were
relatively tame, com- pared to the oppression which could be found in other
sects.
In the end, though, Andrew
Harvey (2000) put it well:
In general, I think that nearly all
of what passes for “crazy wisdom” and is justified as “crazy wisdom” by both
master and enraptured disciple is really cruelty and exploitation, not enlightened wisdom at all. In the name of “crazy wisdom” appalling crimes have been
rationalized by master and disci- ple alike,
and many lives have been partly
or completely dev- astated.
One is of
course still free, even after all
that, to respect Trung- pa for being up-front about his “drinking and wenching”
(in Down- ing, 2001), rather than
hypocritically hiding those indulgences, as many other guru-figures have
allegedly done. That meager re- mainder, however, obviously pales drastically
in comparison with what one might have reasonably expected the legacy of any
self- proclaimed “incarnation of Maitreya Bodhisattva” to be. Indeed, by that
very criterion of non-hypocrisy, one could admire the average pornographer just
as much. Sadly, by the end of this book, that point will only have been reinforced, not in the least diminished, by the many individuals whose questionable influence
on other peo-
ple’s lives has merited their
inclusion herein. That is so, whatever their individual psychological
motivations for the alleged mis- treatment of themselves and of others may have
been.
To this day,
Trungpa is still widely regarded as being “one of the four foremost
popularizers of Eastern spirituality” in the West in the twentieth century—the
other three being Ram Dass, D. T. Suzuki and Alan Watts (Oldmeadow, 2004). Others such as the Buddhist
scholar Kenneth Rexroth (in Miles, 1989), though, have offered a less complimentary
perspective:
“Many believe
Chögyam Trungpa has unquestionably done more harm to Buddhism in the United
States than any man liv- ing.”
* * *
Sometimes the entire Institute seems
like a great joke played by Trungpa
on the world: the attempt of an over- grown child to reconstruct for himself a kingdom according
to whim (Marin, 1995).
Through all of that celebrated
nonsense “for king/guru and coun- try,” the Naropa Institute/University
continues to exist to the pre- sent day, replete with its “Jack Kerouac School
of Disembodied Po- etics.” Previous offerings there have included
courses in “Investiga- tive Poetry”—though, sadly, no
corresponding instruction in “Beat Journalism.” Also, at their annual
springtime homecoming/reun- ion, participation in “contemplative ballroom
dancing.” (One as- sumes that this would involve something like practicing vipassana “mindfulness” meditation while
dancing. Or perhaps not. What- ever.)
Indeed, a
glance at the Naropa website (www.naropa.edu)
and alumni reveals that the ’60s are alive and well, and living in Boul-
der—albeit with psych/environmental majors, for college credit.
CHAPTER XVIII
SIXTY MINUTES
(SWAMI MUKTANANDA)
Why do false Gurus exist? It is our
own fault. We choose our Gurus just as we choose our politicians. The false
Guru mar- ket is growing because the false disciple market is growing. Because
of his blind selfishness, a false Guru drowns people, and because of his blind
selfishness and wrong understand- ing, a false disciple gets trapped. A true disciple would never be trapped by a
false Guru (Muktananda, 1981; italics add- ed).
I had a private darshan ... with Swami Muktananda in India three days before he
died, and I thought he was a magnifi- cent man, an incredibly loving man
(Anthony Robbins, in [Hamilton, 1999]).
BORN IN 1908 IN MANGALORE, India,
Swami Muktananda, like Neem Karoli
Baba, was a disciple of the respected guru Bhagawan Nityananda, whom he met in
1947.
Not
coincidentally, in 1970 Ram Dass introduced Muktananda
to America.
128
To aid his
world mission in furthering the practice of kun- dalini yoga, Muktananda in
1974 established the SYDA (Siddha Yoga) Foundation, with headquarters in South
Fallsburg, NY.
SYDA admirers
have included Jerry Brown, Carly Simon, James Taylor, Diana Ross and Isabella
Rossellini. Also, Rosanna Arquette, Meg Ryan, The Cosby Show’s Phylicia Rashad, Miami Vice’s Don Johnson and his wife Melanie Griffith, and Marsha
Ma- son (Neil Simon’s ex-wife). Plus,
singer Mandy Patinkin,
celebrated songwriter Jimmy Webb—composer of both “MacArthur Park” and
“Up, Up and Away (With My Beautiful, My Beautiful Guru )”—
and astronaut Edgar Mitchell.
* * *
Whoever has attained spiritual
perfection has done so through his Guru. The Guru grants a life full of grace,
com- plete freedom, and liberation of the Self. The Guru’s favor is absolutely
necessary for lasting attainment. Without a Guru man is unhappy; with a Guru he
is full of joy. So surrender yourself
completely to the Guru (Muktananda, 1978; italics added).
The Guru should possess every virtue............................... He cannot be a true
Guru if he ... indulges in sense pleasures....
Without the Guru, it is not possible
for a person to un- derstand the Truth (Muktananda, 1999).
Muktananda’s specific view toward conjugal
relations, further, reportedly
took the following form:
Muktananda advised his devotees to refrain from sex............................... “For
mediation,” he told a South Fallsburg audience
in 1972, “what you need
is.......................................................... seminal vigor. Therefore I insist on total
celibacy as long as you are staying in the ashram” (Harris, 1994).
But
then, those rules
are obviously there only for the benefit
of the disciples, not for the guru who no longer needs them.
At his Ganeshpuri, India, ashram,
“he had a secret passage- way from his house to the young girls’ dormitory,”
one [ex- follower] reported. “Whoever
he was carrying on with, he had switched to that dorm. [He] had girls
marching in and out of his bedroom all night long” (Rae,
1991).
One of the girls thus allegedly
marching—“Jennifer”—claimed to have been raped by the great guru in early 1978.
Muktananda had intercourse with
Jennifer for an hour, she said, and was quite proud of the fact. “He kept
saying, ‘Sixty minutes,’” she said (Rodarmor, 1983).
“An incredibly
loving man.”
The “celibate” guru’s reported
tolerance for sex, however, ap- parently did not extend to sexual tolerance:
“A Guru would never be flirting with
mistresses or hobnob- bing with homosexuals,” a 1976 Muktananda missive reads.
“Homosexuals are considered to be eunuchs—disgusting, im- pure, and
inauspicious” (Chew, 1998).
* * *
If Shiva is angry, the Guru can
protect you, but if the Guru becomes angry, no one can save you (in Muktananda,
1999).
Unfortunately for his disciples, then:
“Muktananda had a ferocious temper,”
said [Richard] Grimes, “and would scream or yell at someone for no seem- ing
reason.” He [claims that he] saw the guru beating people on many occasions (Rodarmor, 1983).
Indeed, Noni Patel, the guru’s valet,
reportedly once sought treatment for an odd wound in his
side.
“At first, he wouldn’t say how he
had gotten it,” Grimes’ wife Lotte recalled. “Later it came out that
[Muktananda] had stabbed him with a fork” (Rodarmor,
1983).
A clear breach of etiquette,
that.
* * *
Former journalist Sally Kempton,
a.k.a. Swami Durgananda, be- gan following Muktananda in 1974. After decades in
the ashrams of the “fully enlightened” Muktananda and his successor, she re-
turned to the secular world in 2002, to teach. She has since found work as a
columnist for Yoga Journal, and been
interviewed on Ken Wilber’s Integral Naked forum (www.integralnaked.org).
Lis Harris’ (1994) article on SYDA, however, contains numer-
ous segments involving Durgananda and her denials of Muktan- anda’s alleged
behaviors, all of them very much worth reading.
* * *
Of Muktananda’s own sagely guru,
Nityananda (who died in 1960), the following information is
extant:
He was a born siddha [“perfected being”], living his entire life in the highest state of consciousness
(Muktananda, 1999).
He was an omniscient being; still he
appeared as if he didn’t know much....
Only occasionally would he speak; however,
you could not understand him
(Muktananda, 1996).
“He was the
best of gurus; he was
the worst of gurus,” etc.
[W]hen in his twenties, he would hide behind trees,
patiently waiting for a cow to come his way. The moment the animal stood
to drop a cowpat, he would rush forward, scoop up the dropping in midair, and
then swallow it (Feuerstein, 1992).
Yum. Nor did
such feasting exhaust the yogi’s interest in cows and their rectal output:
He would at times be seen in the
middle of the road (there was hardly any motor traffic in those days), catching
the dropping from a cow before it fell to the ground, putting it on his head,
and then whistling just like a railway engine and chugging away, as children
often do (Hatengdi, 1984).
“Woo-woo! Next stop, Looney
Station.”
[Nityananda] would speak quite
frequently about devotees who had the mentality of a crow. A crow, even in
heaven, said Baba, insists on eating
shit, because that is what he has been accustomed to. And this is exactly how
these faultfind- ing devotees behave (Muktananda, 1996).
Cows, crows, choo-choos ... and more:
On another occasion, he besmeared
himself from head to toe [i.e., including
his lips] with [human] excrement. He sat
near the lavatories, with large heaps of excrement piled in front of
him. Each time a devotee passed him, he would call out, “Bombay halwa
[sweets]—very tasty—want to eat? Can weigh and give you some” (Feuerstein,
1992).
South Park Yoga.
* * *
By the time of Muktananda’s death in
1982, his SYDA Foundation operated eleven ashrams and hundreds of meditation
centers worldwide. He was initially co-succeeded by his disciple Gurumayi (1955
– present) and her younger brother. Following an alleged power struggle in the
mid-1980s in which that latter sibling left the
organization under disputed circumstances, however, Guru- mayi rules alone (Harris, 1994).
Allegations of
abuses and harassment by SYDA can be found at www.leavingsiddhayoga.net,
as well as in Harris (1994).
CHAPTER XIX
THE MANGO
KID
(BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH)
[Rajneesh] stated that he himself
had attained [Enlighten- ment] at the age of twenty-one.... [H]e went on to
declare that ... there was only one
Enlightened Master at any par- ticular time, and that he was the one (Milne,
1986).
The
Rajneesh Bible ... was really
“the first and last religion” (Gordon, 1987).
BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH, BORN in
1931, achieved his first satori/samadhi at
age fourteen. Prior to embarking on a world mission which was to secure his
place as one of the world’s most infamous
guru-figures, he served as a philosophy professor at cen- tral India’s
Jabalpur University in the late ’50s and early ’60s.
In 1974, he
founded his first ashram in Poona (Pune), south- east of Bombay.
Rajneesh’s
followers have reportedly included the Japanese composer Kitaro, and the former
Françoise Ruddy. She earlier, along with her then-husband Albert, had produced The Godfather (Fitzgerald, 1986). They
and Bhagwan Rajneesh’s other disciples followed teachings which were a combination of “rascal”/“crazy
133
wisdom” behavior, tantric sexual
practices, and often-violent (i.e., to the point of reported broken bones)
Western human potential movement (cf. Fritz Perls, etc.) encounter groups.
Being renowned
as the “Guru of the Vagina,” Rajneesh was, of course, said to be sleeping with
a selection of his female disciples, particularly via “special darshans” granted to them in the move-
ment’s foundling/fondling years. Vivek,
one of the earliest and clos- est of those, was claimed to be the reincarnation of Mary
Magda- lene (Milne, 1986).
Sometimes [Bhagwan] would ask
attractive women to strip off in front of him and lie naked while he peered at
them in- tently. Then, after satisfying himself, he would ask them to get
dressed again. He also had couples make love in front of him, a definite case
of voyeurism....
In the later
years, in Poona, many sexual experiments were tried. Bhagwan told one woman how
to overcome her phobia of rats: she should indulge in oral sex.... In another
tantric session at Poona, the male participants had to eat a ripe mango from
between their female partners’ legs. The mangoes were very popular with
everyone (Milne, 1986).
In the midst of
that revelry, vasectomies were “suggested” for the ashram men—a quarter of whom
complied.
In 1976, the
homophobic (as per Andrew Harvey [2000] and
Storr [1996]) Rajneesh made it known that he
was going to be se- lecting twelve female “mediums” from the ashram for
nightly, re- stricted-group “energy darshans.”
The purpose of those was to be the transferring of his energy through them to the community, and
to the world at large.
As to the characteristics which Bhagwan was looking for in his mediums, he soon explained:
[O]nly women with large breasts
could hope for the honor. “I have been tortured by small-breasted women for
many lives together,” he announced to a startled audience, “and I will not do
it in this life!” (Milne, 1986).
At least one of
those twelve Buddhalicious Babes was report- edly instructed not to wear
panties to the nightly “energy transfer- ring” sessions.
Rajneesh has said at some time that
underwear interferes with the passage of energy (Gordon, 1987).
Former mediums claimed to have had
sexual contact with Bhagwan for the purpose of “stimulating our lower chakras”
... and for “orchestrating our
energies” (Palmer and Sharma, 1993).
He would manipulate my genitals,
masturbate me, but it was also as if
he was rewiring my circuits (in Gordon, 1987).
* * *
There were few legal ways in which a
Westerner could earn money [to stay at the Poona ashram], and before long many
of the girls turned to prostitution....
The other main
way of making money in those days was to mount a drug run (Milne, 1986).
For the same
financial reasons,
a large number of strippers working
from London’s SoHo to San Francisco’s North Beach were sannyasins (Strelley, 1987).
In Rajneesh’s parlance, sannyasis/sannyasins were simply ini- tiated disciples, not seasoned monks
as the term would be taken to refer to in other traditions.
By the late
1970s and early ’80s, this particular “inner city path to spiritual
enlightenment” was beginning to have some pre- dictable reported side-effects:
Three British sannyasins ... were arrested on smuggling
charges in Paris in 1979. The most ambitious known smug- gling attempt was made
in 1979 when fifty kilograms of marijuana were packed into the frame and
furnishings of a hippie-style bus traveling from [Poona] to Europe. About
twenty disciples had invested in the deal and another
twenty had worked on the bus. The contraband, however, was dis- covered
in Yugoslavia, and three sannyasins were
put in jail for a year (Mangalwadi, 1992).
One sannyasi murdered another in one of the hut villages about a mile from the ashram, and another was found dead
with multiple stab wounds beneath
the nearby Mulla-Matha bridge (Milne, 1986).
In the midst of
those difficulties, seeking to expand his work and desiring to escape a
reported $4 million in unpaid income taxes, Rajneesh quietly left India for the
United States in 1981, arriving via a 747 jet in New Jersey.
Pausing at the
top of the departure stairs as he exited the plane, the sage expansively
proclaimed:
I am the Messiah America has been
waiting for (in Milne, 1986).
And this was when the real problems began.
Rajneesh first settled in at the Montclair castle
in New Jersey, and then founded an ashram (“Rajneeshpuram”) in eastern
Ore- gon, purchasing the 120-square-mile Big Muddy ranch in Wasco County there.
(That ranch had formerly been the barren filming location of several John Wayne
westerns.) His eventual
goal was to establish a million-population city in
that region.
So as to not
unnecessarily alarm their conservative neighbors, the proselytizing materials
available from the ashram were screened and re-evaluated. Consequently, “The
Fuck Tape”—con- sisting of Rajneesh “extolling and describing at length the
forty different possible uses of the word ‘fuck’”
(Milne, 1986)—was recast as “a discourse in which Bhagwan
makes jokes about human rela- tionships.”
Rajneesh went
on to assemble the world’s largest private col- lection of
Rolls-Royces—ninety-three in total. The combination of Bhagwan’s public
silence, increasing isolation from his surround- ing ashram community, and
large Rolls-Royce collection, soon manifested as the new phenomenon of
“car-shan,” or drive-by blessings. There, the faithful would line up to catch a
glimpse of His Holiness during his daily trips into the nearest town—Ante-
lope, population thirty-nine—forty-five minutes away.
Meanwhile,
privileged residents and visitors to Oregon and the Rajneesh ashrams/communes elsewhere enjoyed horseback and aircraft rides, boating, swimming and river rafting.
To complete the Club Med appeal,
discos, bar lounges and gaming tables were made available in late 1983 (Palmer
and Sharma, 1993).
And thereby was
the table set for the fortunate few to “eat, drink and be merry,” for
shortly before [Rajneesh] came out
of his three and a half year silence, he prophesied with great drama and
precision that two-thirds of humanity would die of the disease AIDS by the year 2000 (Palmer and Sharma,
1993).
That off-base
prediction was based on Bhagwan’s understand- ing of a Nostradamus verse. (For a debunking of the latter
purport- ed seer, see Randi’s [1993] The
Mask of Nostradamus.)
Fears that
insiders at the Oregon ashram may have been plot- ting to murder Rajneesh soon
took root, however. Thus, in late 1984, Bhagwan and his “right-hand woman,”
Sheela, allegedly commenced with spending $100,000 per month on the
installation of wiretapping and bugging equipment throughout Rajneeshpuram
(Milne, 1986).
Directing their
attention as well to concerns outside of the ashram, followers in the same year
spiked salad bars at ten restaurants
in [nearby The Dalles, Oregon] with salmonella and sickened about 750 people (Flaccus, 2001).
The goal there
was apparently to incapacitate large numbers
of voters, allowing the Rajneesh-sponsored candidates to prevail in
county elections. A contamination of the local water supply was reportedly
planned for after the “test” restaurant poisoning.
Investigations
into that salmonella outbreak ultimately re- vealed an alleged plot to kill the
former U.S. Attorney for Oregon, Charles Turner. Though the attack was never
actually carried out, in the hope of derailing the investigation into their
other activities some of Rajneesh’s loyal followers nevertheless reportedly
assembled a hit team in 1985. They bought
guns, watched Turner’s home, office and car, and discussed ways to assas-
sinate him (Larabee, 2000).
Following all
that, and with the continuing failure of his apocalyptic predictions for the near-end of the world to materialize
—as they had previously dissipated
in 1978 and 1980—Rajneesh was deported from the U.S. for immigration violations
in 1985. He was refused entry
by at least twenty countries before finally re-
turning to his old ashram in Poona,
thereby leaving Americans ei- ther waiting longer for their Messiah ... or
being glad that he had left.
The Oregon
ashram closed down soon after Bhagwan’s depar- ture. (Various followers were
later convicted on assault, attempted murder, wiretapping and food poisoning
charges [Larabee, 2000].) Today, it serves
as a summer Bible camp for teenagers safely de- voted to following their own,
more conservatively acceptable (but still long-haired, robe-wearing, “only one
Enlightened Master”) Messiah.
* * *
The use of consciousness-altering
drugs was never officially ap- proved-of in either the Poona or the Oregon
ashrams. In spite of that, by 1982 Rajneesh was allegedly sniffing nitrous
oxide (i.e., laughing gas) to get high on a daily basis. On one occasion, six
months into that, reportedly reclining in his own $12,000 dentist chair and
babbling,
Bhagwan went on: “I am so relieved
that I do not have to pretend to be enlightened any more. Poor Krishnamurti ... he
still has to pretend” (Milne, 1986).
Krishnamurti—who
actually considered Rajneesh to be a “criminal” for his abuse of the
guru-disciple relationship—was the only “sage” whom Rajneesh had ever
acknowledged as an equal. (Bhagwan himself denied being a guru, but those
denials are no more convincing than were Krishnamurti’s own.) Indeed, by con-
trast to their man-made, imported white-sand Krishnamurti Lake in Oregon, in an
open show of contempt for another of his “main competitors” in the
enlightenment industry, Rajneesh named a sewage lagoon there after Swami Muktananda.
The latter’s own guru, the shit-eating Nityananda, would surely have approved
... and perhaps even gone for a dip.
At any rate,
having returned to India, Bhagwan’s “enlighten- ment” soon improved to the
extent where he could announce that
Gautama the Buddha had entered his
body, and that this had been verified
by the seeress of one of the most ancient Shinto shrines in Japan (Hamilton,
1998).
Rajneesh, as the reincarnation of
Gautama Buddha, fits the model of the Second Coming
ushering in the Thousand Years of Peace (Palmer and Sharma, 1993).
The Buddha
himself, however, made do with a simple Tree in his own spiritual practice
or sadhana, never having had access to a “Bodhi Chair” of Enlightenment.
Of course,
Rajneesh was by no means the first “spiritual seek- er” to reportedly make use
of nitrous oxide in his quest:
William James thought he had
recorded the ultimate mys- tery under the influence of nitrous oxide. On
returning to his normal state, he eagerly consulted the paper on which he had scrawled the great message (DeRopp,
1968).
That message?
Hogamous, Higamous, Man
is polygamous.
Higamous, Hogamous, Woman is monogamous.
* * *
Rajneesh died of a heart attack in
1990 at age fifty-eight, but not before changing his name to “Osho” (“Beloved
Master”), under which authorship his books are currently being marketed. His
Poona ashram continues to host devotees from around the world— up to 10,000
at a time—in an increasingly resort-like, “Club MEDi- tation” atmosphere. Indeed, the
environment currently features waterfalls, a giant swimming pool, a sauna and
cybercafe, and ten- nis courts where “zennis” (non-competitive Zen tennis) is
played.
“Osho has become a cocktail party
name,” said Sanjay Bhar- thi, thirty-four, a freelance graphic designer who
described the Osho lifestyle
as “so aesthetic, so juicy,
so modern, and at
the same time so peaceful” (Waldman, 2002).
In India the once-persecuted
Rajneesh is currently the coun- try’s best-selling author. His books are on
display in the fed- eral parliament library—an honor accorded to only one other, Mahatma Gandhi (Hamilton, 1998).
Indeed, worldwide
Osho book (two thousand titles
in forty-four languages) and
audio-book sales now surpass $1 million annually (McCafferty, 1999). There is, of course, scant
mention in those hon-
ored books of
·
Rolls-Royces
·
Homophobia
·
Prostitution
·
Drug-running
·
Tax evasion
·
Wiretapping
·
Salmonella
·
Assassination plots
·
Nitrous oxide sniffing, or
·
Mangoes ... in
syrup
CHAPTER XX
DA AVATAR,
DA BOMB, DA BUM
(ADI DA, A.K.A.
DA AVATAR, DA LOVE- ANANDA, DA AVABHASA, DA AVADHOOTA, DAU LOLOMA,
MASTER DA, DA FREE JOHN, BUBBA FREE JOHN, FRANKLIN JONES)
The works of
Bubba Free John are unsurpassed (Wilber, 2001a).
It looks like we have an Avatar
here. I can’t believe it, he is really here. I’ve been waiting for such a one
all my life (Alan Watts, in [Da, 1974]).
Adi Da ... is the Divine
World-Teacher, the Giver of Divine Enlightenment, Who has made all myths unnecessary
and all seeking obsolete....
The Divine
Avatar, in the guise of “Franklin Jones,”
had not come to Liberate just a few others, individuals who might be thought
qualified for such a hair-raising “adventure.” Not at all. He had come to all beings (in Da, 1995).
141
[Da] has repeatedly said, in recent
months, that the year 2000 is the year he will be recognized by the world. He
has even gone so far as to claim that Christians will recognize him as the
Second Coming of Christ (Elias, 2000).
Da
Love-Ananda tells [his disciples] that he can do no wrong,
and they, in all seriousness, see in him God incarnate (Feu- erstein, 1992).
BORN ON LONG ISLAND, NY, in 1939,
“the guise of Franklin Jones” lived until age two in an internal state which he
later called “the Bright.”
[A]s a baby, I remember only
crawling around inquisitively with a boundless feeling of Joy, Light, and
Freedom in the middle of my head.... I was a radiant Form, the Source of
Energy, Love-Bliss, and Light in the midst of a world that is entirely Energy,
Love-Bliss, and Light. I was the power of Reality (Da, 1995; all capitalization
is in the original).
Following the
gradual fading of that perspective as he grew
up, the future guru earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from
Columbia University in New York, in 1961. At one point, when asked by his uncle
Richard what he wanted to do with his life, Da (1995) expressed the serious
wish to “save the world.”
And yet, as Wilber (1983) himself
has noted:
[A]
ny group “out to save the world” is potentially problem- atic,
because it rests on an archaically narcissistic base that looks “altruistic” or
“idealistic” but in fact is very egocentric, very primitive, and very capable
of coming to primitive ends by primitive means.
In late 1964,
Jones began studying kundalini yoga in New York City under “Rudi” (Swami
Rudrananda), a disciple of Mukta- nanda.
In a sentimental mood, Da Free John
once mused, “Rudi loved men and I love women. Together we could have fucked the
world” (Lowe, 1996).
Jones visited
Muktananda’s ashram in India in 1968. By May of 1970, he had made two additional similar
trips. Experiences pro- duced in Jones by the intense
meditations overseas included a vi- sion of the Hindu goddess Shakti.
Following that, while meditating in the (Ramakrishna-Viveka- nanda) Vedanta Temple
in Hollywood in the autumn of 1970, Jones
had a spiritual “experience where there was no experience whatsoever.” Through
that, he was “spontaneously and perma- nently
reawakened in the Enlightened Condition
he had enjoyed at birth.”
Describing that non-experience, Jones has said:
I felt the Divine Shakti appear in
Person, Pressed against my own
natural body, and, altogether, against my Infinitely Expanded, and even
formless, Form. She Embraced me, Openly and Utterly, and we Combined with One
Another in Divine (and Motionless, and spontaneously Yogic) “Sexual Union” (Da,
1995; all capitalization is in the original).
Or, more colorfully, in referring to the
same awakening:
The Goddess used to say, “Yield to
me,” and I fucked her brains loose (Free John, 1974).
In 1972, Jones
and a friend opened the Ashram Bookstore on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles,
attracting his first devotees, “many
of them street people” (Lattin, 1985a).
After another
visit to Muktananda in India in 1973, Jones en- acted the first of his many
name-changes, becoming Bubba Free John. (In the late ’70s, Free John took the
“Da” epithet—an an- cient name of God meaning “the Giver”—and, in 1994, added
the “Adi,” thus becoming not merely Realized but Palindromic.) He also founded his first ashram on a former
resort in Lake County, on Cobb
Mountain, California. That location is still referred to by his followers as
the Mountain of Attention.
The following
year, Free John declared himself to be “the Di- vine Lord in human Form” (Gourley and Edmiston, 1997).
[Those who] follow Jones believe he
is an “adept,” a person who came into this world already enlightened with
eternal truth. The sect’s publications also call Jesus an “adept,” but make it
clear that Jones is considered more important (Ley-
decker, 1985).
Also in 1974, during
his “Garbage and the Goddess”
period,
Bubba apparently
started his “sexual theater,”
involving the switching of part- ners, sexual orgies, the making of
pornographic movies and intensified sexual practices (Feuerstein, 1996).
The Mill Valley
Record (Colin, et al., 1985) further
reported:
[James] Steinberg [head of the
Hermitage Service Order] says the destruction [of the pornographic films] took
place a few months after they were made. Steinberg also says that the church’s
dildo collection was either sold or destroyed, he isn’t sure which.
“The church’s
dildo collection.” Sold or destroyed. Amen.
“If you’ll now open your hymnals to
the centerfold, let us all sing
together, ‘God, Oh God, I’m Coming.’”
Interestingly, one of Da’s lingerie-modeling daughters, Shawnee Free Jones, has more recently appeared as an actress in
L.A. Confidential and Baywatch.
At any rate, by
1985 the sect had around one thousand active members—a third of them living in
Marin County, California— with another 20,000 on its mailing lists. (To this
day, active mem- bership remains at around a thousand.) Members there were re-
portedly expected to tithe from 10 to 15% of their income to the new church; in the higher levels of the
spiritual order, they were asked to donate as much as they could.
In that same year, however, the alleged concerns
of former dis- ciples began to surface in public,
as exposed in a series of articles published in the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner:
[Da, they claim] would have them
watch pornographic mov- ies and engage in anal sex—sometimes in front of him,
and sometimes tell them to go to their bedrooms (in Lattin,
1985a).
As a child, [a devotee of Da] had
been sexually abused by a neighbor. To help her through her sexual fears [she]
said, Da Free John told her to have oral sex with three group mem- bers, and
then the guru had sex with her himself.
“I was
hysterical,” she said. “After it was over, I went out into the parking lot and found an open car, and had a
good cry and went to sleep. I was
traumatized. It’s years later that I
came to terms with it” (Butler, 1985a).
In later years, a married couple of Da Party Animal’s
followers were apparently invited over to his house, only to find the
guru in bed, drinking beer and surrounded by cigarette smoke.
In short order,
the wife was allegedly prepared by other fol- lowers, to be taken sexually by
the guru. “And so she was.”
Suppressing his
“irrational feelings” into numbness, however, the husband soon found
a suitable rationalization for that, convinc- ing himself that the guru was
simply teaching him to not be emo- tionally attached to his wife.
And yet, doubts
linger, both about whether the same lessons could possibly have been learned in
some easier way, and other- wise:
There is one thing that has persistently bothered me about the
incident, and that was the pressure on me to drink alco- hol in an attempt to
get me drunk. I still feel I was being manipulated on this count. I also never
quite understood why we were asked to
keep the whole incident quiet (in Feu- erstein, 1992).
Yes, interesting questions, all.
* * *
As of the mid-’80s, the Daists
(followers of Da Guru) operated a “Garden of Lions” school in upstate New York.
Of the pupils there, it was reported that one thirteen-year-old child and his
classmates adorned and venerated a bowling ball. As the student himself put it:
I always felt a love-connection
towards the ball and served it remembering that the Master would touch it
someday and give it his attention (in Lake County,
1985).
For my own
part, that reminds me of nothing so much as growing up with the ’70s sitcom, What’s Happening!! Specifically, the episode where Rerun got “brainwashed” by a “cult,”
and ended up worshiping a head of lettuce named Ralph.
It seemed
funnier then, than it does now. (No word on whether
Da’s bowling ball had a name.)
* * *
In any closed society run by a
“Divine Lord in human form,” of course, it would be rare for any of the
peer-pressured members to openly question “the thread-count of the emperor’s
clothes,” as it were. Indeed, as former residents of Da’s community have
alleged:
Anybody who dares to stand up to
[Adi Da’s] bullying is quickly sent packing (Elias,
2000a).
Elias himself
taught at Naropa in the late 1970s (Bob, 2000),
and later worked as a typesetter in the Dawn Horse Press in the early ’80s.
On another
occasion, Da Guru was asked about the source of his apparent arrogance. A
former community member reported his response:
I only do this as an act.... It
could be much worse (in Lake County, 1985).
Indeed, Jones
himself has apparently claimed elsewhere that, regardless of what his behaviors
might superficially appear to be, he is nevertheless “always Teaching.”
And yet, the
contexts in which the same reported behaviors appear, but where they cannot
reasonably be excused as a mere “act,” betray the real motivations. For
example, consider Da’s al- leged response in a dispute over noise coming from
an ashram ad- jacent to his Hawaiian one, run by a rival guru. After an unsuc-
cessful attempt by Jones’
followers to make so much racket at a big New Year’s party that their opponent
would be sure to support a noise ordinance,
Jones [allegedly] went completely
livid, swearing and criti- cizing them for coming up with the idea for this,
when he himself had endorsed it.
“He always preached that people shouldn’t
come up with a
strategy or plan to life.
Here he was, demanding ‘Give
me a strategy’ to get this
guy” (Neary, 1985).
Or contemplate
Jones’ alleged reaction (reported in the Mill
Valley Record) to the devotee laborers on a construction project having worked
many sixteen-hour days in building
a home for him:
The work schedule and the meager
fare took a toll on the work force. On Christmas Day, [Mark] Miller says he
told Jones, “The people are tired. They need a break.” Miller says Jones replied,
“They will work for me until they drop and then they’ll get up and work some
more” (Colin, et al., 1985).
Of course, such
evident dearth of compassion has been demon- strated many times before—by Da
Scrooge if not Da Avatar.
* * *
In
1980, Ken Wilber penned a fawning foreword
for Adi Da’s Scien- tific Proof of the Existence of God
Will Soon Be Announced by the White House! (I have dealt in depth with the
problems with Wil- ber’s character, ideas, and community, in the companion book
to this one, “Norman
Einstein”: The Dis-Integration of Ken Wilber.) Most of it was spent in arguing that Da was not creating a harmful “cult”
around himself, but Wilber also found space to include the following praise:
[M]y opinion is that we have, in the
person of Da Free John, a Spiritual
Master and religious genius of the ultimate de- gree. I assure you I do not
mean that lightly. I am not toss- ing out high-powered phrases to “hype” the
works of Da Free John. I am simply offering
to you my own considered opinion: Da Free John’s teaching is, I believe, unsurpassed by
that of any other spiritual Hero, of any period, of any place, of any time, of
any persuasion.
Not finished
with hyperbole—or “syrupy devotionalism,” as
one critic (Kazlev, 2003) reasonably
put it—in 1985 Wilber con- tributed effusive text for the front matter of Adi
Da’s The Dawn Horse Testament:
This is not merely my personal
opinion; this is a perfectly obvious fact, available to anyone of intelligence,
sensitivity, and integrity: The Dawn
Horse Testament is the most ec- static, most profound, most complete, most
radical, and most comprehensive single spiritual text ever to be penned and
confessed by the Human Transcendental Spirit.
Obviously, any
sincere seeker reading such ecstatic praise from
the most highly respected “genius” in consciousness studies (as Wilber
has been regarded
for the past quarter of a century)
might be inclined to experience for
himself the teachings of such a unique, “greatest living” Adept. Indeed, had I
come across those endorsements in my own (teenage years, at the time) search,
and been aware of and unduly awed by Wilber’s status in the con- sciousness
studies community, I myself might well have foolishly taken such exaggerations
seriously enough to experience Adi Da’s community discipline first-hand.
How unsettling,
then, to discover a 1987 interview with Yoga
Journal, only a few short years after the Dawn Horse ejaculations, where Wilber stated his opinion that Adi
Da’s “entire situation has become very problematic.” Nearly a decade later (1996a),
he ex- plained: “‘Problematic’ was the euphemism
that sociologists at that
time were using for Jonestown.”
For my own
part, not being a sociologist, I would never have caught on to the meaning of
that “unsafe word” without having it explained to me ... albeit years after the
fact, here. I suspect that I am not alone in that regard.
No matter:
Three years later, in 1990, Wilber was back to con- tributing endorsements for
Da’s teachings, this time to the humbly titled The Divine Emergence of the World-Teacher:
The event of Heart-Master Da is an
occasion for rejoicing, for, without any doubt whatsoever, he is the
first Western Avatar to appear in the history of the world. His
Teaching
contains the most concentrated
wealth of transcendent wis- dom found anywhere, I believe, in the spiritual
literature of the world, modern or ancient, Eastern or Western (in Bond- er,
1990; italics added).
Note that, in
the above quote, Wilber is evidently considering himself fit not merely to
pronounce on the degree of enlightenment of others, but even to confirm their
avatar status, “without any doubt whatsoever.”
Of the above
author Bonder (2003) himself—who has since
in- dependently adopted the status of teacher, without Adi Da’s bless-
ing—Wilber has more recently declared:
Saniel Bonder is one in whom the
Conscious Principle is awakened.
Again, note the
oracular nature of the statement, as no mere expression of opinion, but rather as a without-doubt, categorical
evaluation of another person’s
spiritual enlightenment—as if Wil- ber himself were able to see into others’
minds, or clairvoyantly discern their degree of conscious evolution.
Others,
however, have reasonably questioned the possibility, even in principle, of
anyone executing such over-the-top insight:
[B]
oth mystics and sympathetic writers about mysticism are just wrong
if they think that there is a way of telling wheth- er the other person has had
a genuine experience or just pre- tends to have had one....
A man may write excellent love poetry without
ever hav- ing been a
comparable lover; it is the writer’s skill as a writ- er that makes his words
convincing, not his skill as a lover. The mystic’s talk about his experience
may be skillful or clumsy, but that does not improve or weaken his actual ex-
perience (Bharati, 1976).
A mere seven
years before the aforementioned “problematic” Yoga Journal piece, Wilber (in Da, 1980) had again ironically been
“protesting too much,” in print, that Adi Da was not creating a harmful
environment around himself:
[N]
owhere is [Da] more critical of the “cultic” attitude than he is towards those who surround him. I
have never heard
Da Free John criticize anyone as
forcefully as he does those who would approach
him chronically from the childish
stance of trying to win the favor of the “cultic hero.”
Other fans of Da—even
those who have comparably considered him to be “the ultimate
expression of the Truth residing in all re- ligions”—however, have claimed to
find in his followers exactly what Wilber would evidently rather not see:
The problem was they were much too
friendly, much too happy, and far too nice. More plainly put, they were all
busy breathlessly following their own bliss. Not only this, but unless my eyes
were deceiving me, they all looked like maybe they came from the same
neighborhood or the same college. It was uncanny really. And very
disquieting, as well. I mean, they all looked and sounded almost exactly alike.
My God, they’re pod people, I thought (Thomas
Alhburn, in [Austin, 1999]; italics
added).
Hassan (1990)
gives a completely plausible explanation for such phenomena:
One reason why a group of [alleged]
cultists may strike even a naïve outsider as spooky or weird is that everyone
has sim- ilar odd mannerisms, clothing styles, and modes of speech. What the
outsider is seeing is the personality of the leader passed down through several
layers of modeling.
Prior to
actually meeting Adi Da and his followers, Alhburn had not only blurbed for
Da’s books but had actually written a foreword for one of them. Also blurbing
have been “stages of dying” expert Elizabeth
Kübler-Ross, and Barbara Marx-Hubbard. The former was credited by Time magazine as being one of the “100
Most Important Thinkers” of the twentieth century. The latter, Marx-Hubbard, is
the president and a founding member of The Foundation for Conscious Evolution;
she was once called “the best informed human on the concept of futurism,” by
Buckminster Ful- ler.
Sad. Very sad.
Wilber closed
his aforementioned (1996a) admonitions
regard- ing Da Seclusive Avatar—sequestered in Fiji, by that point—with the
relative caution that, until the day when the “World Teacher consents to enter
the World,” one might just keep a “safe distance” as a student of Da’s
writings, rather than as a resident of his com- munity. As to how Adi Da
“re-entering the world” from his island seclusion would alleviate the
“problematic” aspects of his teach- ings, however, that was not made clear.
By comparison,
would Jim Jones re-entering the world from his
isolated agricultural commune in Guyana have made his teach- ings safe? If not, why would a
comparable re-entry have been the solution to the “problematic” (Wilber’s word)
aspects of Adi Da? Isn’t it better for the world at large—if not for their
unfortunate, already duped followers—if these misfits do isolate themselves?
At any rate,
none of the above milquetoast caveats from Wilber
have ever been included in any of his books, where they might have reached “a
hundred thousand” people (Wilber, 2000a).
Rather, in terms of kw’s own
attempts at promoting that version of reality,
the (1996a)
letter exists, at the time of this writing, only on his publisher/author website ... buried in the Archives
section, not sharing the home page with his many accolades.
Wilber later (1998a) offered an explanatory open letter to the
Adi Da community. That was posted anonymously
(i.e., evidently not by Ken himself) on the Shambhala
KW Forum for date 8/1/01 in
the Open Discussion area, a full three years after the fact. (That forum itself
has existed since early 2000.) There, he clarified his position on Da Realizer,
back-tracking significantly from any in- sight which one might have been
tempted to credit him from 1996, and explicitly stating that he had not
renounced his view of (or love for,
or devotion toward) Da as Realizer. Rather, he argued simply that Da’s “World
Teacher” status enjoindered upon him the maintaining of a presence in the
world, and the initiation of an “even more aggressive outreach program” by the
community, as opposed to his ongoing seclusion.
An “even more aggressive outreach program.” To
put a positive spin on a “problematic” situation, and “spread the word” to more
people, thereby doing more harm? Or
perhaps simply to warn po- tential devotees as to what they’re getting
themselves into, as if that would then clear up all of the reported problems
with the community? (Would “Jim Jones with a warning label” have been the
solution to his “problematic”
craziness?)
Again, as
posters in Bob (2000)—themselves making no
claim to genius, but clearly adept in common sense—have insightfully (and
independently) pointed out:
I find it absurd that Wilber seems
to attach more importance to criticizing Da’s failure to appear in public
forums than he does to examining the very serious [alleged] abuses of trust and
misuse of power that have [reportedly] been perpetrated by Da under the guise
of spiritual teaching. In light of the well-documented [reported] problems that
Da has created in his own life and his follower’s [sic] lives, it is completely ir- relevant to any evaluation of Da
whether or not he accepts Ken’s challenge to go out into the world at large.
Who cares! Why would anyone want to see Da broaden his influence by speaking to
a larger audience?
Precisely.
The full text
of Wilber’s aforementioned (1998a) open
letter to the Daist Community is eminently worth reading, toward one’s own disillusion regarding the caliber of
advice given by even the “brightest lights” in the spiritual marketplace. To
summarize its contents: Wilber states
that he neither
regrets nor retracts
his past
endorsements of Adi Da; that it is
only for cultural and legal con- siderations
(i.e., for evident
protection when “Da Shit hits Da Fan”) that he can no longer publicly give
a blanket recommendation for people to follow Da; that he is pleased that his
own writings have brought people to Da Avatar and hopes that they will continue
to have that effect in the future; and that he still recommends that “students
who are ready” become disciples/devotees of Da.
A month and a
half after distributing the above nuggets of wisdom to the Adi Da community,
Wilber (1998b) reconfirmed his position in
another open letter, posted as of this writing on his website. There, he
states—with rarely encountered opacity—that the “real difficulty of ‘the
strange case of Adi Da’ is that the guru principle is neither understood nor accepted by our culture” (italics added).
He further opines (italics again added) that
for those individuals who realize
full well the extremely risky nature
of the adventure, but who feel a
strong pull to- ward complete and total
surrender of their lives to a
spiritual Master, I can certainly recommend Adi Da.... [H]e is one of the
greatest spiritual Realizers of all time, in my opinion.
Note further
that the related title, “The Strange Case of Franklin Jones,” was used in 1996 by David Lane and Scott Lowe, in their
exposés of Da/Jones and his ashram environment. Unless that was a common phrase
going around in the mid-’90s, then, it would
seem that Wilber
was likely aware
of their earlier,
insightful critique of the dynamics reportedly going on within Adi Da’s
com- munity. Rather than properly absorbing the information in that, however,
he has evidently simply seen fit to give his own, purport- edly more valuable
version of the same—even though looking on merely from a safe distance, not as
a first-hand, residential par- ticipant. That is sad, since
Lowe and Lane have offered
real insight into the situation, while
Wilber has consistently failed miserably to do the same.
One further
assumes that in praising Da’s spiritual state, Wilber was referring more to the
man’s later realizations than to early insights such as the following:
I remember once for a period of days
I was aware of a world that appeared to survive in our moon. It was a
superphysical or astral world where beings were sent off to birth on the Earth or other worlds,
and then their bodies were enjoyed
cannibalistically by the older
generation on the moon, or they were
forced to work as physical and mental slaves (Da, 1995).
Then again, the later realizations have their problems,
too:
In 1993, Adi Da Revealed that
Ramakrishna and his princi- pal disciple, Swami Vivekananda, are the
deeper-personality vehicle of His bodily human Incarnation (in Da, 1995).
“Ramakrishna, Part II: Return
of the Booby.”
Of course,
unless one is inclined to take the visions of “astral moon cannibal slaves” on
the part of “Da greatest living Realizer” seriously, one arrives at serious concerns
as to Adi Da’s mental sta-
bility. After all, skeptics have long rightly held that even a single instance
of any given medium (e.g., Blavatsky) or ostensibly sid- dhi-possessing sage being caught “cheating” in “manifesting”
ob- jects, casts doubt on every “miracle” that had previously been at- tributed
to the individual. Likewise, if even one aspect of an indi- vidual’s
enlightenment has been hallucinated but taken as real, the potential exists
for it to all have been the product
of delusion in a psychiatric, not a metaphysical,
sense.
So you have to
ask yourself: Do you believe that
there are B- movie-like “cannibal masters/slaves” on the astral counterpart to
our moon?
Wilber, at least, seems (in Da, 1985)
to have no doubt, overall:
I am as certain of this Man as I am
of anything I have writ- ten.
Well put. I, too, am as certain of Adi Da’s unparalleled enlight- enment, “astral moon cannibal
slaves” and noble character as I am of anything Wilber has ever written.
* * *
Over the years, Adi Da has taken
credit for numerous “miracles,” such as a “brilliant corona that stood around
the sun for a full day” (in Free John, 1974). No scientist or skeptic, though,
would ever accept such anecdotal claims as evidence of a miraculous control
over nature. And with good reason, particularly given Lowe’s (1996)
eye-witness testimony of the same “miraculous event”:
I had been outdoors all that
afternoon. Not only had I seen nothing out of the ordinary, but no one within my
earshot had mentioned anything at all about the miracle at the very time it was
supposedly happening! I was not trying to be dif- ficult or obtuse, but this
proved too much for me. If a great miracle had occurred, why was it not
mentioned at the time? I asked a number of devotees what they had seen and why
they had not called everyone’s attention to it, but received no satisfactory
answers. It slowly emerged that I was not alone in missing this miracle; my
skeptical cohorts on the commu- nity’s fringe were similarly in the dark.
There might
even have been some (natural) coronal
effect visi- ble to some members of the community. And they, being “desperate for confirmation of their
Master’s divinity, [may have] exaggerated the significance of minor
synchronisms, atmospheric irregularities, and the like.” That, however, would
still hardly qualify as a mira- cle. It would further do nothing to ease one’s
concern about the members of the community, like Lowe, who didn’t see that “au-
thenticated miracle,” reportedly being quickly demoted to
positions of lower status for not going along with the group version of that reality.
One is strongly
reminded, in all that, of the research on con- formity done in the 1950s by psychologist Solomon
Asch. For there, experimental subjects in the midst
of other, unknown (to them) confederates, were required
to match the lengths of two lines. After
the planted confederates had deliberately given wrong answers, the subjects were asked for their
responses.
[They frequently] chose the same wrong answer, even though
they did not agree with it (Lalich, 2004).
Another classic
experiment in social psychology involves a participant standing on a busy city
sidewalk, and staring up into the sky at nothing in particular. When performed
by just that sin- gle person, few of the people passing by will glance up, and
proba- bly no one will actually stop to stare up with the individual.
Should you, as
that participant, bring along several friends to the same spot to look upward
with you, however, the result will be quite different:
Within sixty seconds, a crowd of
passersby will have stopped to crane their necks skyward
with the group.
For those pe-
destrians who do not join you, the pressure to look up at
least briefly will be nearly irresistible (Cialdini, 2001).
Indeed, in one
experiment performed by Stanley Milgram and his colleagues, 80% of the
passersby were drawn to look at the empty area.
In that light,
one may better appreciate the importance of, for example, Adi Da’s first
“street people” disciples. For, when begin- ning any movement, it is less
important that the first converts be of
any high caliber than that they simply be “warm bodies.” As soon as a small group is thus formed,
others will “look up at least briefly,” or “stop and stare” altogether, simply
for having seen the social proof of
the validity of your new path in the very existence of that group.
* * *
Da’s “sun corona” manifestation was
again included as a docu- mented “miracle” in his (1974) self-published, and
thus Implicitly- Approved-By-Him, Garbage
and the Goddess. (Nearly all of the “enlightened” figures mentioned herein
have gotten their writings into print only via self-publication.) And if, as
Lowe hints, the “miracle” itself never
happened, Da of all people
would have known that from the beginning. Why then
would he have proceeded with allowing it into print? To publish something
like that in the hope of
decreasing “cult-like” following
would have been an interesting ap- proach indeed, since it could only have had
exactly the opposite effect.
Further, since
Wilber had read that book prior to writing the above 1980 and 1985 forewords—it
is listed in the bibliography for his (1977) Spectrum of Consciousness—one must ask: Does this mean that he was accepting that apparently non-existent “miracle”
as being valid? One cannot help but assume so, since the alterna- tive would be
to say that Wilber regarded Da as not accurately presenting his spiritual
accomplishments, but still chose to pen his gushing forewords.
Da’s “corona
miracle” seems to have come into being not via any trickery, but simply via an
“emperor’s new clothes” conformist mentality on the part of the witnesses in
his community. Still, if one such
“verified miracle” of Adi Da, “witnessed” by all of the members in good standing of his society, should thus turn out to be invalid, and yet be touted as real by the guru himself, how much
confidence should one have, not
merely in the community consen- sus as to Da’s “great Realization,” but even in
the remainder of the claims made by Da Guru himself?
* * *
Having heard Wilber’s skewed
interpretations of Adi Da’s work and
environment, now read, if you wish, the 1985 exposé series, preserved in the Daism Research Index at www.lightmind.com. Then decide for yourself
whether Wilber’s point of view on all this has any validity at all.
Or, more
pointedly, ask yourself how, in the face of all that easily accessible information, anyone of sound mind and body could
still recommend that others “surrender completely” to someone
like Adi Da. What kind of a
“genius” would compare an environment to Jonestown, for being (in his own
words) “problematic,” and yet still encourage others to “surrender completely”
to its god-man leader?!
By the standards of traditional
society, [Adi Da] is like the man in the madhouse claiming to be Napoleon who
has con- vinced a few of the other patients
that he is the Boss. But the people walking around outside the
walls of his Loka [i.e., his world] with-bars-on-the-windows
say “Yes, you think you are Napoleon, but we don’t think so. You claim to be
the Most Enlightened Being Ever Was and Ever Will Be, but we don’t think so. It
just doesn’t add up. By traditional religious stan- dards, you are quite
insane, totally nuts, absolutely bonkers, a real freakazoid nutcase ”
One man against
the world ... and about a thousand people have bought his one-way rap (Bob, 2000).
Or, as another
disillusioned ex-follower put it:
One can imagine Da in a previous
lifetime as a minor Euro- pean nobleman, exploiting his impoverished serfs,
sleeping with their wives and daughters, and living a splendidly dis- sipated
life of luxury, all in the name of the divine right of kings. As a model for
proper behavior in the twilight of the twentieth century, Da seems neither
better nor worse than, say, Marlon Brando or Keith Richards (Lowe, 1996).
“Sympathy for the Da-vil.”
*
* *
Sal Luciana was formerly a close
friend of Jones from their Scien- tology days in 1968 until their falling-out
in 1976. He was credited by Da with having achieved a “nearly ‘instant
enlightenment’” (in Free John, 1974). He further expressed (in Lattin, 1985a) his own evaluation of Jones’
perspective on the world, as follows:
At this point, I think he really thinks he is God................................ If you had
every whim indulged
[since 1972], how would you think of yourself?
And still, “they call him by many names, who is but One God.” Franklin Jones. Franklin, Benjamin.
Franklin Mint.
Bubba Free John. Bubba Louie. Da
Quicksdraw.
Da Free John. Da Free Paul.
Da Free George.
Da Ringo.
Da
Love-Ananda. Da Love-Bliss. Da Loves-You, Yeah-Yeah- Yeah.
Dau Loloma. Dau La’Samba. Ba-Da-Da-Da-Da La Bamba. Da Do Run
Rerun, Da Do Run Run.
De Do Do
Do, De Da Da Da.
Master Da. Master
John. Master Bates.
Da Dildo. Adi Da. Da Avatar.
Da Bomb.
Da Bum.
D’uh.
Zippity Do Da.
The late Da
Hoogivesahoot (d. November, 2008) spent much of the 1980s and ’90s living in
Fiji, on an estate formerly owned by Raymond Burr. He was reportedly kept
company there by thirty long-time devotees, and by his nine (9) “wives.”
Included among those “insignificant others” was September 1976 Playboy center-
fold Whitney Kaine (Julie Anderson), a
former cheerleader whom Da Avatar had reportedly stolen away from her
tennis-playing, high-school-sweetheart boyfriend, also a devotee of his, back
in the 1970s.
Well, “La Dee Da.”
CHAPTER XXI
SOMETIMES I FEEL
LIKE A GOD
(ANDREW COHEN)
Andrew Cohen is not just a spiritual
teacher—he is an in- spiring phenomenon. Since his awakening in 1986 he has
only lived, breathed and spoken of one thing: the potential for total liberation from the bondage of
ignorance, supersti- tion and selfishness. Powerless to limit his unceasing
inves- tigation, he has looked at the “jewel of enlightenment” from every
angle, and given birth to a teaching that is vast and subtle, yet incomparably
direct and revolutionary in its im- pact (from the “About the Author” section
in [Cohen, 1999]; self-published).
ANDREW COHEN
WAS BORN in New York City in 1955.
He spent his
formative years—either from ages five to fifteen (Cohen, 1992), or from age
three into his twenties (Tarlo, 1997), depending on whom you choose to
believe—undergoing psycho- analysis.
158
When Cohen was
sixteen years old, he experienced a sponta- neous expansion of consciousness “in all directions simultaneously” into infinite space, along with a “revelation”
concerning the inter- connectedness and inseparability of all life.
A few years later,
he was initiated into kriya
yoga (a variant
of kundalini yoga in general) by a “direct disciple” of Paramahansa
Yogananda (i.e., by one who knew the yogi when he was alive). Having practiced that technique for six months,
Cohen was blessed with a temporary kundalini surge
and a vision of blazing white light.
After giving up
his musical aspirations in despair of not find- ing perfect, lasting spiritual
happiness through them (in his ver- sion)—or of not having the right stuff to
get to the top as a drum- mer (in his mother’s version)—he traveled to India,
meeting his future wife (Alka) there. In 1986 in that country, after having ex-
perienced several “betrayals” at the hands of earlier teachers, he met his
guru, Hari Wench Lal (H. W. L.) Poonja. The latter was presenting himself as an
enlightened disciple of the widely cele- brated sage Ramana Maharshi. Maharshi
himself, however, not only never confirmed anyone else’s enlightenment but had
no offi- cial disciples and no recognized lineage.
With or without
that spiritual connection, however,
Poonjaji told me several stories of
people who had faith in him and had experienced miraculous and sudden cures
from illnesses (Cohen, 1989).
During Cohen’s
first meeting with Poonja he fell into a pro- found enlightenment experience of
“emptiness.” That was con- firmed as real by Poonja, and seems to have duly
impressed both Andrew and his guru:
Poonjaji told me that I had the same
look in my eyes as his Guru Ramana Maharshi did. He said that he had seen these
eyes only three times in his life: in his Guru’s, in his own and
in mine (Cohen, 1992).
As Poonja himself
put it:
I knew this would happen—you’re the
one I’ve been waiting for my whole life and now that I’ve met you I can die (Cohen, 2002).
Of course,
Poonja did eventually die, but not before using the same “you’re the one I’ve
been waiting for all my life” line several years later on a female disciple,
whom he reportedly sent to Amer- ica to effectively “clean up Andrew’s mess.”
That, however, would
be getting ahead
of our story.
For the time
being, both guru and disciple were very much in love with each other and with
the idea of enlightenment. Indeed, as
Poonja (in Cohen, 1992) intimated to Andrew’s mother Luna Tarlo, who had by
then joined them in India:
You don’t know how rare this is.
Something like him ... only happens once in several hundred years.
[Poonja] read a list of the names of
all the Buddhas that had come into this world. When he got to the end of the
list he read out my name and then looked at me and smiled (Cohen, 1992).
Following his
enlightenment, and with only a scant two and a half weeks of training, Poonja sent Cohen out into the world as a
teacher, with great expectations. Andrew himself then reportedly confirmed his own feelings,
of now having a special
purpose in life
—and a fairly messianic one at that—to his mother:
“Believe it or not Poonja and I
might be the only two people in the whole world doing the [enlightenment] work
we’re do- ing,” Andrew said (Tarlo, 1997).
As another early disciple of Cohen tells it:
Poonjaji has told him he will create
a revolution amongst the young in the West! “I pass my mantle on to you,”
Poonjaji had said (van der Braak,
2003).
If that
“mantle-passing” from guru to disciple sounds disturb- ingly familiar, that is
because the same phrase comes up between the biblical Elijah and Elisha, just
before Elijah was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot, having given a “double
portion” of his own blessings to
Elisha:
He [Elisha] took up also the Mantle
of Elijah that fell from him, and went back, and stood by the bank of Jordan (2
Kings 2:13).
In the
contemporary acting-out of that incident, then, Poonja has placed himself in
the position of Elijah—who, in some reincar- nation-based interpretations
(e.g., Yogananda, 1946), was also John the Baptist. Cohen, on the other
hand, plays the part of Eli- sha, or Jesus Christ.
Such a
comparison might well have displeased Poonja, how- ever, given his positively
unbridled attitude toward his own spiri- tual attainment:
“I’m only jealous of one man,”
[Poonja] said. “Who was that?” I asked. “The Buddha,” he replied, “he’s the
only one who surpassed me” (Cohen, 1992).
Of course,
being the foremost disciple of such
an exalted figure is bound to do
wonders for one’s self-image. Thus, in Andrew’s own reported, enlightened words
(in Tarlo, 1997):
[V]ery few people like me exist in
the world. I can destroy a person’s karma. If you trust me, I have the power to com-
pletely destroy
your past.
Anyone who loves
me............................... is guaranteed enlightenment.
You know, Luna, sometimes
I feel like a god.
Regarding “Luna”:
Cohen always referred
to his mother by her first name, even before his
“enlightenment.”
At any rate,
the god-like Andy C. quickly took his wife as a disciple, and reportedly pressured
his mother (Tarlo,
1997) into the same—thus exhibiting atrociously poor judgment in both of
those relationships. Nevertheless, the latter mother, in particular, was soon
to benefit from Cohen’s spiritual largesse, apparently being informed over
afternoon tea—to her own surprise—that she was now enlightened.
Another disciple, Dvora, evidently profited
comparably, report- edly
being notified one morning by Andrew that “her enlighten- ment was complete”
(Tarlo, 1997). Being thus ostensibly fully enlightened, however, apparently did
not absolve loyal disciples such as Dvora of discipline at the hands of the
guru. Indeed, she seems to have discovered that the hard way when bleakly
inform- ing Andrew of her parents’ pressures on her to come home, i.e., to
leave India and Cohen:
“You’re a hypocrite, a liar, and a
prostitute,” Andrew said [to Dvora] in cool measured cadence and he got up, and
went to his bed and lay back, and turned on the TV (Tarlo, 1997).
Such,
allegedly, were Cohen’s applications of “skillful means” toward the
enlightenment of his followers.
It would be
getting ahead of our story to disclose that Cohen’s mother no longer considers
herself to be enlightened. Nor does she anymore regard herself as an “unvirgin”
holy mother to the erst- while Messiah, Andrew.
The “messiah”
epithet is actually not at all out of place here, for the possibility was
apparently actually floated, among Cohen’s followers, that he may have been the
reincarnation of the Buddha. As Poonja himself declared: “The twentieth century
is lucky to have seen the Perfect
Buddha reborn to live with them to Free [sic]
them from the miserable samsara” (Cohen,
1992). Not to be out- done, disciples of Cohen reportedly also suggested that
Andrew may have been the reincarnation of Jesus Christ (Tarlo, 1997).
Ironically, the
messiah-figure in Monty Python’s Life of
Brian also had the surname Cohen. The contemporary namesake wins in
quantity, however, counting around a thousand disciples— although only about a
hundred live in his sangha—to the
fictional Brian’s mere dozens.
Of course, as
with guru-figures in general, we should hardly
be surprised to find it claimed that “respect was Andrew’s obses- sion.”
As he himself reportedly put it:
I
am no longer an ordinary
man leading an ordinary life. And
from now on, no one will spend time with me unless they treat me with respect
(in Tarlo, 1997).
As to the
loyalty which the Antidangerfield guru evidently ex- pected from his followers,
then, Andre van der Braak (2003) gives the unsettling example of a committed
student reportedly needing to be willing “rather to be burned alive than betray
Andrew.”
Interestingly,
Poonja once stated his view of the guru-disciple relationship to Andrew as, “Do
not be attached to the teacher” (in Cohen, 1989). Cohen’s own perspective in
recent years, however, has apparently grown to encompass exactly the polar
opposite of that position:
[O]
ne cannot be too dependent upon a truly enlightened per- son, Cohen
said, exasperated. “The more attached you get to a person like that, the more
free, literally, you become.” Cohen derided the importance that people in
general, and Westerners in particular, give to independence....
Cohen’s belief
in his own specialness kept coming to the fore. Those who are enlightened, he said, by definition can do
no wrong. They “are no longer acting out of ignorance, in ways that are causing
suffering to other people” (Horgan, 2003).
That, of
course, is the most dangerous belief
which any human being could hold. Yet, it is the
normal attitude of any loyal disciple toward his or her “perfect” guru,
invariably demanded by the lat- ter, as we have already explicitly seen with
Trungpa, Da, and many sad others:
Maharishi [Mahesh Yogi] can do no wrong (Scott,
1978). [Rajneesh] can’t be wrong (Belfrage, 1981).
* * *
It is easy to show, via the same
contextual comparison method which we have utilized for previous “crazy wisdom”
practitioners, that Cohen’s reported rude behavior, like Adi Da’s and
Trungpa’s, apparently lacks any wise or noble basis.
For example,
consider that in 1997 an Amsterdam newspaper printed a generally complimentary
review of a lecture there by Cohen. The piece ended with the ironic but
nevertheless fairly in- nocent observation that, although the guru had his
students shave their heads, Cohen’s own hair was well coiffed.
When that
article was read to Andrew in English, Cohen re- portedly “shows no response
until those last lines. Then he pulls a face”:
“What a bastard, that interviewer.
He seemed like such a nice guy. Call him up Harry! Tell him he’s a jerk.”
When Harry
sensibly resists burning that PR bridge, Cohen apparently shoots back:
He’s an incompetent journalist. Then
just tell him he’s no good at his profession (in van der Braak, 2003).
If the
journalist in question had been a formal disciple of An- drew’s, everyone
involved would have had no difficulty at all in ra- tionalizing Cohen’s
reported temper as being a “skillful means.” That is, his rumored outburst
would have been meant only to awaken the scribe from his egoic sleep. That hypothetical
situa- tion, however, is not at all the case. We should therefore not credit
Cohen’s reported response, at such absolutely minimal provoca- tion, as being
anything more than infantile.
Further, we must take alleged eruptions such as that as forming the “baseline”
for the man’s behavior, against
which all other
potentially “skillful means” are to be judged.
My own
considered opinion is that when the baseline of such “noise” is subtracted from
Cohen’s reported behaviors in the guru- disciple context, there is nothing at
all left to be regarded as a “skillful means” of awakening others in that.
* * *
Cohen has
founded numerous spiritual communities or sanghas
in North America. Initially, he had his disciples rent shared houses
in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1988. They soon moved the commu- nity to
Boston, and later to Marin County, California, in the sum- mer of 1989. Then
back to a $2 million “Foxhollow” ashram in the Berkshires of Massachusetts in
1997. For the latter privilege, each moving disciple reportedly paid one
thousand dollars for each year that he had been a disciple of Cohen, to a
maximum of five grand.
Andre van der
Braak began following Cohen in 1987, living in the latter’s sangha for eleven
years. During that period, he acted at various times as the head of the
community editorial department, specifically as an editor for both What Is Enlightenment? magazine and for
Cohen’s first book, Enlightenment is a
Secret.
He further
(2003) expressed his own early, inflated enthusi- asm for Cohen’s enlightenment
work within that shifting commu- nity, as follows:
This is an evolutionary experiment;
we are the forerunners in an
evolutionary wave that will transform the western spiritual world!
Life within
that “evolutionary” community, however, appears to have unfolded in a less than
heavenly manner. Indeed, the over- all inculcated attitude reportedly involved a banishing
of personal
or independent life in favor of enforcing
Andrew’s rules, and of “liv- ing for the sake of the whole” (van
der Braak, 2003).
It is, however,
only by making our own mistakes as individu- als that we can learn. If one goes
through life simply “making other
people’s mistakes,” obediently following their instructions and rules regardless of how obviously
wrong those may be, the best
that one can hope to learn from that is to appreciate the impor- tance of
thinking for oneself. And that latter realization, as long as it may take for
one to properly appreciate, is just the start
of the unfolding of one’s full human potential, never the end of it.
Toward the
close of van der Braak’s own decade-long involve- ment with Cohen, the enforced
sangha discipline reportedly took the
form of six hundred prostrations each morning, done while re- peating a mantra
created by the enlightened master: “To know nothing, to have nothing, to be no
one.”
This is the message he wants engraved in our brain (van der Braak,
2003).
Tarlo (in van
der Braak, 2003) further describes Cohen as ex- hibiting an “ever growing
paranoia and ferocious will to control.” Under that alleged mindset,
disciplined life in his community is said to have entailed, at one time or
another:
·
Followers doing up to a thousand prostrations in a ten-hour period each day, on the orders of
Cohen
·
The guru instructing his devotees to shave their heads and maintain
celibate relations to prove their dedication to his path. At one point,
approximately one-fifth of the communi- ty were shaven celibates
·
Disciples willfully destroying $20,000+ cars, at Cohen’s in-
struction and indeed with him present, to demonstrate their non-attachment and sincerity
·
Successful painters renouncing their art, at Andrew’s mis- led
counsel, for it allegedly being simply “an extension of ego,” and thus
ostensibly an impediment to enlightenment
·
Followers throwing their secular books into the Ganges, and obediently incinerating their life’s
writings (with no known backups), on Cohen’s demand
·
Disciples surviving for extended periods on five hours or less of
sleep per night, not by choice but by necessity for meeting the community
schedule of mandatory activities
·
Students on meditation retreats not being allowed to have personal
conversations, only being permitted to discuss Cohen’s summary of his teachings
in his “five fundamen- tals”
·
Injuctions by Cohen against his disciples entertaining intel- lectual pursuits. As Tarlo (1997) put it: “I mentioned to
[Andrew] that I’d glanced at [Wilber’s] Up
from Eden and he told me not to read further in the book because it was
intellectually stimulating [sic]”
·
Cycles of expulsion and readmission to the community, for devotees
who had fallen out of favor with Cohen. Those were then given second or third
chances to work their way back up into Andrew’s good graces
·
And, as is the case with every spiritual community, anyone who
leaves “is viewed with scorn and contempt. He hadn’t the courage to face
himself” (van der Braak, 2003)
After all that,
Luna Tarlo (1997) summarized her own opin- ions regarding Cohen’s guruship:
It just seems to me that [Andrew] is
as duped by his own propaganda as were all those other brother-gurus in the
marketplace who promised deliverance from suffering—from Hitler to David
Koresh.
Note that that
wholly negative, Hitler-comparing evaluation comes from Cohen’s own Jewish mother and former disciple. Tarlo
still loves him “as her son,” but will rightly have nothing further to do with
the activities which stem from him feeling “like a god.”
* * *
As we have hinted at above, Ken
Wilber’s writings have tradition- ally generated a uniquely high level of
interest within the inner circle of Cohen’s community. Andre van der Braak had
actually done his psychology thesis on Wilber, piquing Cohen’s curiosity with his associated bookshelves full of kw’s ponderous works, and
resulting in their reported collective brainstorming as to how to get
Wilber in as a student of Cohen’s.
We speculate about why he hasn’t
been willing to meet with Andrew. Is he afraid
of ego death? (van der Braak, 2003; ital- ics added).
Their
persistent courting evidently paid off, however, for in Wilber’s foreword to
Cohen’s (2002) Living Enlightenment we
read:
[Rude Boys] live as Compassion—real
compassion, not idiot compassion—and real compassion uses a sword more often
than a sweet. They deeply offend the ego (and the greater
the offense, the bigger the ego)....
Andrew Cohen is
a Rude Boy. He is not here to offer comfort;
he is here to tear you into approximately a thousand
pieces ... so that Infinity can reassemble you....
Every deeply
enlightened teacher I have known has been a Rude Boy or Nasty Girl. The original Rude Boys were, of course, the great Zen masters,
who, when faced with yet another ego claiming to want Enlightenment, would get
a huge stick and whack the aspirant right between the eyes.... Rude Boys are on
your case in the worst way, they breathe fire, eat hot coals, will roast your
ass in a screaming second and fry your ego before you knew what hit it....
I have often
heard it said that Andrew is difficult, of- fending, edgy, and I think, “Thank
God.” In fact, virtually every criticism I have ever heard of Andrew is a variation
on, “He’s very rude, don’t you think?”
Of course,
Tarlo’s (1997) exposé of Cohen had been published nearly half a decade before Wilber’s penning of that odd mixture of
images. Had kw properly informed himself of that, he would most certainly have
heard criticisms of Cohen which could in
no way be dismissed as arising
merely from overly sensitive egos complaining
about not being sufficiently coddled. (Needless to say, Cohen dis- putes the
accuracy of the depiction of life in his communities given by his own mother,
and presumably does not agree with van der Braak’s sketching of it, either. The
WHAT enlightenment??! web- site, though,
offers many additional, generally equally uncompli- mentary stories from other
former disciples.)
If being a
“Rude Boy” simply means speaking unpleasant truths, then yes, “every deeply enlightened teacher” has probably
done that. Such beneficial behavior,
however, is vastly different from
what Trungpa, Adi Da and Cohen (unlike, say, Aurobindo and Ramana Maharshi) have allegedly indulged in.
Further, just
because a “master” is a “Rude Boy” toward oth- ers obviously does not mean that his own “breakthrough” into claimed
radical enlightenment was the product of having previ- ously been treated in
that way himself! Indeed, neither Adi Da nor Cohen nor Trungpa have recorded
their own enlightenments as arising from being on the receiving end of such
behavior. That fact is radically significant, as is the fact that neither Da
nor Cohen, explicitly, have managed to produce even one disciple as “enlight- ened” as they themselves claim to be, in spite of their
“rude” behav- iors.
It does have to be considered at
this point that there are no practitioners in the advanced and ultimate stages
(Da, in [Elias, 2000a]).
None of Cohen’s students have become
liberated (Horgan, 2003).
Beyond that,
the whole disturbingly violent “whack between the eyes” thing is, as we have
seen, a rather absurdly romanticized
view of Zen. Indeed, one cannot help but wonder: Has Wilber him- self ever
received such a beneficial, hard blow between the eyes with a huge stick, or
literally had the crap beaten out of him? Was that what brought on any of his
early, “verified” satoris, or his
nondual One Taste realization? If not, he has no business recom- mending such
treatment to others.
Notwithstanding
all of those concerns, other revered spiritual figures have been equally impressed
by Cohen, on the mere basis of his writings, as has the easily excitable
Wilber. Indeed, as Penor Rinpoche, head of the Nyingma School of Tibetan
Buddhism since 1991, put it (in Cohen, 2000):
I have an appreciation for Andrew
Cohen’s works on the quest of the spiritual path, which explore the essence of
reli- gious faith. His work is very beneficial for anyone curious about
Enlightenment as the ultimate goal. I have confidence that Embracing Heaven & Earth will bring great benefit to readers
and seekers in their spiritual practice.
Rinpoche’s
endorsement there, too, came well after the 1997 publication of Tarlo’s exposé
of Cohen. He and Wilber are hardly alone in that regard, however, in having
failed to do the relevant research before offering a confident opinion. Indeed,
others in the same embarrassing situation include the head of the Sivananda
ashram, who averred that Cohen “shines like a light in darkness.” Also, the
president of Kripalu, the science fiction writer Amit Goswami, Lama Surya Das,
and Swami Chetanananda of the Nit- yananda Institute. (For the latter, see LNI
[2003] and Read [2001].) All of those
individuals enthusiastically endorsed Cohen (2000),
as did the “God-realized” John W. White (cf. 1997),
who there commended Cohen as being a “RAMBO-dhisattva,” or spiri- tual
peace-warrior.
Presumably, the
titles “Rocky of Ages”—with his trusty, ad- miring sidekick, the “Bullwinkle of
consciousness studies”—and “Cohen the Barbarian” were already taken.
Body Shop founder Anita
Roddick, too, has in recent
years fall- en for Andrew’s
brand of salvation—inconsistent as that discount brand may be:
“I
don’t like unconditional love,” [Andrew] says. “Love always has to be earned” (van der Braak,
2003).
Of course, such
radically conditioned love would be the com- plete opposite of what Dr.
Elizabeth Debold (in Cohen, 2000) cred- its
Andrew with expressing. For there, she lauds exactly “his de- mand that we
realize and live a love that has no bounds.”
A love with “no
bounds” would obviously be unconditional and
not needing to be “earned,” after all, would it not?
The “real
compassion” of which Wilber speaks with such cer- tainty then allegedly
manifests through Cohen in this manner:
I
don’t give a damn about your personal
evolution anymore. I just want to be able to use you for my
community (in van der Braak, 2003).
Of course, not
everyone reacts positively to such “compassion- ate, Rude Boy” discipline.
Indeed, the reported experiences of one particularly unfortunate disciple of
Cohen, who lived in a “state of chronic panic” and allegedly ultimately ended
up “under a psychia- trist’s care, thoroughly sedated” (Tarlo, 1997), would
reveal as much.
As Pavlov
himself again discovered in having animals try to distinguish between flattened
circles and fairly round ellipses, ini- tially excitable dogs could easily feel
constant panic, in not know- ing how to please their “master,” when pleasing the master, how- ever little he may
have merited that respect, is all that matters. Ob- viously then, when
spiritual disciples are driven to such literal panic and madness, that
breakdown has nothing whatsoever to do with their own alleged “psychological
immaturity.” Nor does it have
anything to do with the phenomenological nonsense of sup- posedly being “unable
to face up to the fact that naked Reality, which reveals itself when our
conceptual grids are removed, is an unimaginable richness of actualities and
possibilities” (Feuerstein, 1992).
And what was
Cohen’s reported “non-idiot compassion”-based response to all of that?
“Enlightenment and madness are very
close.” Then he laughed, and added, spookily, “It could happen to any one of
you” (Tarlo, 1997).
* * *
Aside from attempting to spread his
teachings through his books and personal counsel within his spiritual
community, in 1992 Cohen founded What Is
Enlightenment? magazine. That bi-annual (now quarterly) periodical has been
praised by Wilber (in Cohen, 2002) as
follows:
Andrew’s magazine ... is the only
[one] I know that is ... ask- ing the hard questions, slaughtering [needlessly
violent ma- cho imagery, again] the sacred cows, and dealing with the Truth no
matter what the consequences.
The
avant-garde biologist Rupert Sheldrake likewise
opines (in Cohen, 2005):
What
Is Enlightenment? magazine is a
unique forum for in- quiry that goes deeper and reaches further than any other
spiritual magazine I know.
Other former residents of Cohen’s
spiritual community, how- ever, have voiced far less complimentary opinions
of that same
publication, calling it “a
hodge-podge of opinions that go nowhere. A foray into mental masturbation.”
At a back-issue
price of $9 U.S. per glossy, full-color copy, however, there are cheaper ways
of mentally ... um....
Anyway, Cohen’s
own books are themselves no examples of fine literature, metaphysical or
otherwise, being abundantly pad- ded with blank pages and unnecessarily large—generally nearly double spaced—leading between lines of text. For example,
of the seventy-two total pages,
including front and back matter,
in his self-serving (1999)
tract, In Defense of the Guru Principle,
twenty- six are blank, and four others contain only section/chapter head- ings. Eight more are
taken up with the foreword and preface, giv- ing the book an unbelievable
“Don’t Need To Read This” rating of 38/72 = 53%, even independent of its nearly double-spaced content.
Cohen’s equally widely spaced Living Enlightenment—en- dorsed by Barbara
Marx-Hubbard—fares marginally better, with a DNTRT of around 30%. A rating of
5% would be more typical for an average
book. Beyond both of those
unimpressive texts, how- ever, the gargantuan amount
of white space
in Cohen’s Enlight-
enment is a Secret must
be seen to be believed. Was there an ink
shortage? Or a paper surplus?
When you read
and research a lot, you notice things like that. When you pay full price for
such vacuous creative artistry and en- vironmental unconsciousness, you notice
it even more.
Centering a teaching around “emptiness” is one thing. But bla- tantly padding books with thick,
unruled, empty sheets of paper— useful neither for note-taking nor for
toiletry—is taking it to an extreme. Nor would a real publisher take that route to such a pain- fully obvious, tree-wasting
degree—which Roddick, of all people, should have noted and objected to at first
glance.
Of course,
Wilber (2000a; italics added), as usual,
sees things differently:
[U]ntil the ecologists understand
that the ozone hole, pollu- tion, and toxic wastes are all completely part of
the Original Self, they will never gain enlightened awareness, which alone
knows how to proceed with these pressing problems.
Anyone with the least
comprehension of those
issues, however, can easily
see that the first step in “knowing how to proceed” is simply to “stop the bleeding.” If Cohen’s “enlightened awareness”
only makes the bleeding worse, that is to be expected. For, it
has never been the Self-realized “meditation masters” of this world who have stood at the front line of any
battles, environmental or otherwise. Rather, it has always been the
looked-down-upon and “less spiritually advanced” activists who have taken the
risks and effected those changes. (Rare exception: Zen roshi Robert Aitken,
whose efforts have at times “depart[ed] radically from the Japa- nese Zen
tradition in which opposition to political authority has been negligible and
civil disobedience unknown” [Tworkov, 1994]. In his demonstrations against
nuclear testing and sexual inequal- ity, however, he has surely stood
side-by-side with many others for whom Zen and the like were little more than
distant curiosities. Yet, they were every bit as able to see “how to proceed”
as he was. Still, both Aitken and Cohen are arguably doing better than the
enlightened Wilber himself, if one considers his black leather fur- niture [Horgan, 2003a] and Thanksgiving turkey dinners [Wilber, 2000a]
from an animal
rights perspective. One need not even agree with that often-judgmental
alternative view in order to see that Wilber is in absolutely no position to
lecture ecologists or the like on how to create a better world by becoming
“more like him.”)
Cohen’s books
themselves are all published by Moksha Press, which is again simply the self-publishing vehicle for his own
teach- ings. In any such situation, one would confidently expect not mere- ly
the text but the promotional materials for any publication to be at least vetted,
if not actually written, by the author-publisher himself. Thus, the inflated
“About the Author” description of Cohen’s greatness which opened this chapter
could not reasonably have been put into print without his own full approval.
* * *
Cohen eventually split from his own guru, Poonja,
upon learning of various indiscretions in the master’s
conduct, including his having reportedly fathered a child via a blond, Belgian
disciple. He ex- plained that communication breakdown simply in terms of himself
having “surpassed [his] own Teacher” (Cohen, 1992).
Of course,
all humility aside,
Poonja obviously considered him- self to have accomplished the same “surpassing the
Teacher” feat. For he regarded only the Buddha as being above him, in spite of
claiming Ramana Maharshi as his own guru and teaching lineage. That is, Poonja
could not have been “second” to the Buddha if he had not, in his own mind,
surpassed his teacher, Maharshi.
If Andrew has
now surpassed Poonja, that presumably places him too above Maharshi, and second
in line to the Buddha himself. Freely casting aside any remaining sense of
perspective, then,
in experiencing unexpected
resistance to his humble “revolution,” Cohen (1992) wrote that it was only the
“hypocrisy and self-decep- tion” of others in the face of his “truth” that
caused them to be afraid of him.
More recently,
following the publication of Tarlo’s exposé of
her claimed experiences in Cohen’s spiritual community, signifi- cant
concerns were publicly raised about the health of that envi- ronment. In
response, Andrew (1999) gave his explanation as to the origin of the controversies then swirling around him, as
being the product only of his own uncompromising integrity.
Unfortunately,
integrity enforced from within the context of
an allegedly “fiercely controlling” perspective, coupled with abso- lute
authority in that same position, is still a chilling concept, bound to result
in disaster. “Being true to their ideals” in such a context is, indeed,
probably something which the leaders of any totalitarian regime could claim
just as validly.
Sociologist Hannah Arendt, who
covered [Nazi] Adolf Eich- mann’s trial, made the telling statement: “The sad
and very uncomfortable truth of the matter was that it was not his fa- naticism
but his very conscience that prompted
[him] to adopt his uncompromising
attitude.” Eichmann had said himself that he would have sent his own father to
the gas chamber if ordered to (Winn, 2000; italics added).
* * *
It was not so long ago that Cohen
was reportedly teaching that “there are no accidents” (in Tarlo, 1997). Conversely, he was (2000)
emphasizing the need for all individuals to “take responsibility for their
entire karmic predicament”:
The reason that The Law of Volitionality [the second of the “five tenets” of
Cohen’s formalized path] is such a challeng- ing teaching is that we live in a
world where most of us are convinced that we couldn’t possibly be responsible
for every- thing that we do. And the reason that we believe we couldn’t
possibly be responsible for everything that we do is simply because we are
convinced that we are victims....
[T]hose who ... want to be free more than anything
else
... are willing to whole-heartedly take responsibility for abso- lutely
everything that they do [italics added].
Only slightly more recently,
however:
Cohen derided the notion—promulgated
by New Agers and traditional believers alike—that everything that happens to us
has been divinely ordained or at the very least happens for a reason. “The narcissism in that kind of thinking is so
blatant, I mean, it’s almost laughable.”
Pain and
suffering often occur in a random fashion, Cohen assured me. He and his
Indian-born wife, Alka, were crossing a street
in New York City a few years earlier [i.e.,
in 1994] when they were hit by a car and almost killed. “I was going,
‘Why did this happen?’ And I realized that it didn’t happen for any particular
reason. It just happened” (Horgan, 2003).
As far as being
“almost killed,” however, Cohen merely suf- fered a broken right arm and
injuries to his right calf in that acci- dent; his wife sustained a concussion
and a fractured jaw. All in all, those
are fairly minor
wounds, considering the context, i.e.,
one could just as well feel lucky for having incurred no spinal or
inter- nal organ damage. Indeed, a different person might actually man- age to
turn the same incident into a proof that “God was watching over them.” For,
considering that they “could easily have been killed,” isn’t it “a miracle” that they survived with such minor inju- ries?
Independent of
that, the responsibilities shirked by Cohen in his accident—i.e., in him not
“taking responsibility for absolutely everything he has done”—boil down to him
simply not watching where he was going. The
taxi, after all, did not ride up onto the sidewalk; rather, Andrew and his wife
stepped straight into its path, albeit at a red light. But did we not all
learn, well before age ten, to look both ways, even just in peripheral vision,
before cross- ing the street?
Contrast the
abdication of responsibility in his own implicit victim-hood, further, with
Cohen’s reported attitude toward the supposed responsibilities of others under
much harsher circum- stances:
For a self-professed bodhisattva, [Cohen] was awfully con- temptuous of
human frailty. He bragged to me about how he had scolded a schizophrenic student
for blaming his prob- lems on his mental illness
instead of taking
responsibility for himself (Horgan, 2003; italics added).
That same
contempt is, of course, part of the same “Rude Boy” attitude which Wilber so
inexcusably celebrates in Cohen.
This, then, is
Cohen’s apparent worldview: His own stepping into the path of an oncoming
vehicle has no cause, and therefore no responsibility, truly making him a
“victim.” But severe mental ill- ness afflicting others is to be overcome by an
acceptance of respon- sibility from which he himself explicitly shrinks.
Further, since
Cohen gives no examples of good things
hap- pening equally “without
a reason,” one might assume
that only bad
things are thus spiritually acausal. Indeed, finding one’s “soul mate” or
having a book on the New York Times best-seller
list— Cohen is in no danger of either—would
both presumably still occur “for a reason.” That is, they would happen perhaps
for one’s own spiritual evolution, or for the sake of the dreamed-of “revolution” in
one’s grandiose life-mission.
And to such gibbering “Buddhas” as this, one should then “sur- render completely,” for one’s own
highest benefit?
Cohen describes enlightenment as a form
of not-knowing. And yet his guruhood, his entire life, revolves around his be-
lief in—his knowledge of—his own unsurpassed
perfection. To borrow a phrase,
Cohen is a super-egomanic. His casual contempt for us ordinary, egotistical
humans is frightening, as is his belief that, as an enlightened being who has
tran- scended good and evil, he can do no
harm. Cohen may not be a monster, as his mother claims, but he has the
capacity to become one (Horgan, 2003;
italics added).
All potential
monstrosities aside, however, even Cohen would surely agree, after his own
“accidents” and many “persecutions”— not to mention having his own Jewish mother compare him to Hit-
ler—that “sometimes you feel like a god ... sometimes you don’t.”
CHAPTER XXII
HELLO,
DALAI!
(THE DALAI LAMA)
THE DALAI LAMA IS THE HEAD of the
Gelug School of Tibetan Bud- dhism.
The title
“Dalai Lama” itself is Mongolian, meaning “Ocean of Wisdom” or “Oceanic Wisdom
Master.”
Each successive
Dalai Lama, beginning with the first such leader born in 1391, is regarded as being an incarnation of the pre- vious
one. They are also seen as incarnations of Chenrezig, the Bo- dhisattva/Buddha
of Compassion.
Upon the passing of the Dalai Lama,
his monks institute a search for the Lama’s reincarnation, who is usually a
small child. Familiarity with the possessions of the previous Dalai Lama is
considered the main sign of the reincarnation. The search for the reincarnation
typically requires a few years which results in a gap in the list of the Dalai
Lamas (Wikipe- dia, 2003).
The current
Dalai Lama—the fourteenth
in that spiritual line
—Tenzin Gyatso, was born in 1935. He
has lived in Dharamsala, India, since fleeing the Chinese invasion of Tibet in
1959.
176
Previous
incarnations in that same lineage have left their own marks on history:
[T]he Sixth Dalai Lama ... was said to have been unsuited for his office, said to have loved many
women, as well as having a fondness for gambling and drink (Carnahan, 1995).
He did not observe even the rules of
a fully ordained priest. He drank wine habitually....
“Ignoring the sacred customs of Lamas and monks in Ti- bet he began by bestowing care on his
hair, then he took to drinking intoxicating liquors, to gambling, and at length
no girl or married woman or good-looking person of either sex was safe from his
unbridled licentiousness” (French, 2003; italics added).
One of the early Dalai Lamas was
particularly known for his love of women. It was common practice for households
in which a daughter had received
the honor of the Dalai
Lama’s transmission through sexual union to raise a flag over their
home. It is said that a sea of flags floated in the wind over the town (Caplan, 2002).
That Sixth, Tsangyang
Gyatso, lived only a few hundred years ago, from 1683 to 1706, in traditional,
agrarian Tibet.
Given this
reincarnational lineage, then, we need hardly be surprised that the current
Dalai Lama has himself voiced a thought or two concerning sexual
matters. For, when questioned as to which common experiences he had most
missed out on, the re- tirement-aged monk “pointed at his groin and laughed: ‘I
obviously missed this’” (Ellis, 2003).
The non-violent
winner of the Nobel Peace Prize also
admitted that he “would not have made a good father as he had a bad tem- per”:
I used to be somewhat hot-tempered
and prone to fits of im- patience and sometimes anger. Even today, there are,
of course, times when I lose my composure. When this happens, the least annoyance can take on
undue proportions and up- set me considerably. I may, for example, wake up in
the morning and feel agitated for no particular reason. In this state, I find that even what ordinarily pleases
me may irri-
tate me. Just looking at my watch
can give rise to feelings of annoyance (Lama, 1999).
At any rate,
other lamas from the Dalai’s own country of birth have evidently not “missed
out” on sex to the same degree, as one Western
female teacher and devotee of Tibetan Buddhism
noted, in attempting to sort
through her own feelings on the subject:
How could this old lama, a realized
master of the supreme Vajrayana practices of Maha Mudra, choose a thirteen- or
fourteen-year-old nun from the monastery to become his sex- ual consort every
year? What did the lama’s wife think?....
I talked to a
number of Western women who had slept with their lamas. Some liked it—they felt
special. Some felt used and it turned them away from practice. Some said they
mothered the lama. But no one described it as a teaching; there was nothing
tantric about it. The sex was for the lama, not them (in Kornfield, 2000).
Of course,
there are two sides to every issue.
Thus, Tenzin Pal- mo, who herself spent years in Tibet
as the only (celibate) woman among hundreds of male monastics, after having
earlier laughed off Chögyam Trungpa’s
“wandering hands” in England, noted:
Some women are very flattered at
being “the consort,” in which case they should take the consequences. And some
women only know how to relate to men in this way. I some- times feel we women
have to get away from this victim men- tality....
A true guru,
even if he felt that having a tantric rela- tionship might be beneficial for that disciple,
would make the request with the understanding that it
would not damage their relationship if she refused.
No woman should ever have
to agree on the grounds of his authority or a sense of her obedience. The
understanding should be “if she wished to, good; if not, also good,” offering
her a choice and a sense of respect. Then that is not exploitation (in Mackenzie, 1999).
Still, much as
one might agree with the need to “get away from
this victim mentality,” when a “great spiritual being” or an “infallible god”
asks you to do something, you are entitled to feel flattered, to even enjoy it
... and still, to not be able to say, “No.” After all, it is not possible
to separate one’s “sense of obedience”
and need for salvation out of all
that, perhaps even moreso when God “asks nicely.” Webster (1990), quite honestly, covered all of those points
over a decade ago. Only because all indications are that they have not yet
properly sunk in is it worth repeating them here.
We will return to that
issue in a later chapter.
In any case,
Janwillem van de Wetering (2001) related
further experiences with an eighteenth high-lama (i.e., one who had osten-
sibly been recognized as a lama in seventeen lifetimes before):
Rimpoche [sic] had been given [a] car by his
support group of London-based backers and often took girl disciples on out-
ings to the seashore. A month later, when I was in Amster- dam, an accident
interfered with the temple’s routines. Rim- poche, driving home after visiting
a pub in a nearby town, accompanied by his favorite mistress, hit a tree.
“Alcohol- related”....
Rimpoche drank
constantly and became irritable at times. My wife was about to whap a fly that
was bothering her during dinner and Beth [the favorite, mini-skirted mis-
tress] screamed, “Don’t kill a sentient being!” and got whacked over the head
by Rimpoche, who told her to keep her
voice down.
The amorous
lama in question, after years of hard living, died in his early forties. A
Mohawk Indian shaman, to whom that story of debauchery was told, offered her
scattered analysis:
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve heard of that
happening before. It prob- ably was the only way Rimpoche could have stayed
here” (van
de Wetering, 2001).
The ridiculous
idea there is, of course, that the more elevated the soul is, the more he must ground himself into the earth to
keep from simply leaving his body and returning to the bardo realms or astral
worlds, etc.
By contrast,
though in line with the teachings of his own more conservative lineage, the
current Dalai Lama obeys and enforces well-defined limits on the “pleasures of
the flesh”:
His
adamant stand on sexual morality
is close to that of Pope
John Paul II, a fact which his Western followers tend to find embarrassing, and prefer to ignore. The Dalai Lama’s
U.S.
publisher even asked him to remove
the injunctions against homosexuality from his [1999] book Ethics for the New Mil- lennium, for fear that they would offend American
readers, and the Dalai Lama acquiesced (French, 2003).
Expounding further on such
restrictions, the Lama (in P. Har- vey, 2000)
has said:
Sexual misconduct for men and women
consists of oral and anal sex. Even with your wife, using one’s mouth or other
hole is sexual misconduct.
As for when sexual intercourse takes
place, if it is during the day it is also held to be a form of misconduct (Lama, 1996).
Thankfully, some “fun” is still
allowed, albeit not during day- light hours:
To have sexual relations with a
prostitute paid by you and not by a third person does not, on the other hand,
constitute improper behavior (Lama, 1996).
Interesting. Yet still,
speaking of “the other hand”:
Using one’s hand, that is sexual
misconduct (the Dalai Lama, in [P. Harvey, 2000]).
Masturbation includes emitting semen on another person,
a monk getting a novice to
masturbate him, or himself mas- turbating a sleeping novice, which could be
seen to include homosexual acts. It is a lesser offence, of expiation [i.e.,
atonement], for nuns “tormented with dissatisfaction” to slap each other’s genitals with their
palms or any object, with the slapper “enjoying the contact” (P. Harvey, 2000).
“Nuns just wanna have fun.”
The
present Dalai Lama’s
views on reincarnation, too, stray somewhat
from the spiritual norm:
There is a possibility that a
scientist who is very much in- volved his whole life [with computers], then the
next life ... [he would be reborn in a computer], same process! Then this
machine which is half-human and half-machine has been re- incarnated (Hayward and Varela, 1992).
Both of those
authors, Jeremy Hayward and Francisco Varela, have been followers of Chögyam
Trungpa. Hayward helped to found, and has taught at, the Naropa Institute/University;
he is currently the “Acharya-in-residence” at the Dechen Chöling medi- tation
center in France. He also sits on the Board of Editors of the refereed Journal of Consciousness Studies. Varela
sat on the same board until his passing in 2001, and was a founding member of
Wilber’s Integral Institute. No word on his reincarnations yet, but if your new
Xbox or iPod is acting up....
For my own
part, though, I do not consider that proposed rein- carnational scenario to
be at all likely. In the interest of full disclo- sure, however: I
myself used to program computers for a living. Yet, in spite of those
sixty-hour weeks, the “non-human” half of me is still more Vulcan than
semiconductor.
Interestingly,
Ken Wilber (2001a) offered his own opinion on
a very closely related subject to the above reincarnational sugges- tions:
[T]his whole notion that
consciousness can be downloaded into microchips comes mostly from geeky
adolescent males who can’t get laid and stay up all hours of the night staring
into a computer screen, dissociating, abstracting, dissolved in disembodied thinking.
Well, “geeky adolescent males” ... and certain
respected lamas. Also, sort of, Allen Ginsberg’s semi-coherent,
unapologetically mi- sogynistic friend and fellow admirer of Chögyam Trungpa, William
S. Burroughs. (Burroughs was also a
huge fan of the work of the orgone-fancying and orgasm-celebrating
psychologist, Wilhelm Reich.) For, when not busy playing “William Tell”—and
missing the target, if not the
devoted head supporting it—with his thence- late wife, Burroughs (1974) mused
the following:
They are now able to replace the
parts [of the human body], like on an old car when it runs down. The next
thing, of course, will be transplanting of brains. We presume that the ego,
what we call the ego, the I, or the You, is located some- where in the
midbrain, so it’s not very long before we can transfer an ego from one body to
another. Rich men will be able to buy up young bodies.
*
* *
Interestingly, the hardly pacifistic
actor Steven Seagal has been declared, by Penor Rinpoche, to be a reincarnated
lama, i.e., a sa- cred vessel or tulku of
Tibetan Buddhism. Perhaps for that “trail- ing cloud of glory,” Seagal was once
seated respectfully ahead of— i.e., closer to the stage than—Richard Gere, at a
Los Angeles lec- ture given by the Dalai Lama. Of course, if Penor is wrong
about Seagal, the former is nowhere near as wise or intuitive as his fol-
lowers believe. On the other hand, if he is right and Seagal is a tulku, that
only shows how little such titles (including Penor’s own, as
Rinpoche) mean.
[I]n 1994 Seagal [reportedly] split
with Kusum Lingpa, the exiled Tibetan lama also then favored by Oliver Stone
and a number of other Hollywood stars, when Lingpa refused to declare him a tulku. Then in 1995, Seagal went to
India and chartered a plane to tour Tibetan monasteries looking for another
spiritual master....
In his audience
[with the Dalai Lama], according to Dora
[M.], Seagal felt that something “unique” had tran- spired between him and the
Dalai Lama. “He claimed that His Holiness bent down and kissed his feet,” she
said. “And Seagal took that to mean that the Dalai Lama was proclaim- ing him a
deity” (Schell, 2000).
In June of
1997, the deified god-man Seagal was formally rec- ognized as the reincarnation
of Chungdrag Dorje—the founder of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism—by
Penor Rinpoche.
Penor was in the process of setting
up dharma centers around the world when Seagal invited him to L.A. and re-
portedly made a substantial [monetary] contribution to ... his
“seat in the West”....
The editor of the Buddhist journal Tricycle, Helen Twer- kov [sic], was blunt about
her suspicions: “It’s
a difficult situ- ation, because no one who knows
Steven Seagal—who’s been around him—seems to think he demonstrates any elevated
spiritual wisdom” (Schell, 2000).
Such apparent
dearth of spirituality, however, has evidently not dampened Seagal’s enthusiasm for the numerous
daft supersti- tions inherent
in the Tibetan Buddhist path:
[A]ctor Steven Segal [sic] declared, “My chakras began spin-
ning and then went into balance after putting on my [Shao- lin] Wheel [of Life
pendant]” (Randi, 2003).
In any case,
the aforementioned Penor Rinpoche is the same one who has expressed deep
appreciation for Andrew Cohen’s work.
It is also the same Penor Rinpoche—now head of the Nying- ma lineage—of whom
Ken Wilber himself (2000a) has spoken ap- provingly:
Although I have been meditating for
around twenty-five years—and have tried dozens of different spiritual
practices
—most of those that I do at this
time were received at the Longchen Nyingthig given by His Holiness Pema Norbu
(Pe- nor) Rinpoche.
Further, this
is also the very same Penor Rinpoche who, in 1986, recognized one Catharine
Burroughs as the first female American tulku,
saying that “the very fabric of her mind was the Dharma” (Sherrill, 2000). Dilgo Khyentse
Rinpoche later confirmed that reincarnation, i.e., of a
sixteenth-century Tibetan saint, Gen- yenma Ahkön Lhamo—co-founder of the
Palyul tradition of Tibet- an Buddhism within the Nyingma School—as Burroughs.
(Khyen- tse was the Dzogchen teacher of the Dalai Lama. He was also, of course,
the same sage who reassured Trungpa’s and Tendzin’s fol- lowers that those
gurus had given them authentic dharma, after
Tendzin had already
given some of them AIDS.)
Burroughs herself, renamed as
Jetsunma Ahkön Norbu Lhamo, went on to accumu- late around a hundred
followers—well short of the fifteen hundred which Penor Rinpoche had predicted would come. She also founded the largest Tibetan Buddhist
monastery in the United States, lo- cated outside Washington, DC.
The great,
recognized female tulku had reportedly
earlier claimed to be the reincarnation of one of Jesus’ female disciples,
entrusted in those earlier times with the passing-down of Gnostic texts. She
had further apparently told her future third husband, in channeled sessions,
that the two of them had ruled ancient, unre- corded civilizations on Earth.
They had also supposedly governed galaxies in previous lifetimes together
(Sherrill, 2000).
That, of course, could
account for Jetsunma’s fondness for Star
Trek and science fiction movies in general.
In any case,
the responsibilities given to the tulku in
this pre- sent life were only slightly less impressive than galactic leader- ship:
“The future of Dharma in the West is
riding on us,” she told her students (Sherrill, 2000).
Nor was the Dharma everything to wind up “riding on” the for- mer Brooklyn housewife. For, as her
androgynously appealing, strong body of a triathlete, female personal trainer
(Teri) was to reportedly discover, in the midst of a “very personal” relationship:
While Buddhists aren’t really
supposed to proselytize, lamas are known to be very crafty, and they use all
kinds of tech- niques—flattery, promises, even lies—to expose a student to the
Dharma. And it is thought to be an enormous blessing if a lama chooses to have sex with you (Sherrill,
2000).
Oral sex and masturbation, out. Lesbian sex, in.
“Enormous blessings.”
Thence followed
much additional reported financial and per- sonal nonsense—including the
forty-plus Jetsunma dropping Teri and instead taking
one of her twenty-something male disciples as a
“consort.” The latter was, however, himself apparently cut loose a year later.
He was further unbelievably talked into becoming a monk in order to “keep the
blessing” conferred upon him in having had sex with his lama/guru, by never
again sleeping with an “ordi- nary woman.”
Soon
thereafter, the space-age Jetson-ma, ruler of remote gal- axies, became engaged
to another male disciple, two decades her junior. (Her mid-life tastes in
clothing correspondingly began to gravitate toward skin-tight jeans, black
leather boots and alleged frequent Victoria’s Secret catalog purchases. Those
were appar- ently paid for out of a six-figure annual personal allowance which
reportedly amounted to half of the perpetually struggling ashram’s operating
expenses [Sherrill, 2000].) That latest,
vacillating fol- lower separated from Jetsunma in 1996, reunited in 1997, sepa-
rated again in early 1998 and reunited once more later that year, then
separated again in 1999.
At the start of
her “personal involvement” with the bisexual Teri, Jetsunma had been married to
her third husband, in a rela- tionship dating back to when she was near-completely unknown.
In what must surely be one of the
odder divorce settlements ever negotiated, that former, embittered husband
received $2500 in cash and a “large
crystal ball”—presumably to aid himself in not getting involved with any
comparably mixed-up women in the fu- ture. The same man apparently later worked in public relations
for the Naropa Institute for several years (Sherrill, 2000).
Well, “better the Mara you know,” etc.
In terms of contextual comparison, Jetsunma predictably fares no better than any of the other “sages” whom we have
previously seen:
[Jetsunma’s husband at the time]
felt her distance, and he felt her growing contempt for him—and for her
students. At dinner she would imitate them, make jokes about them (Sherrill,
2000).
Such reported
private imitations and jokes about disciples whose primary failing was to
consider their guru-figure to be a great and holy being could, of course, have
been indulged in for no one’s spiritual or psychological benefit but her own.
Jetsunma’s
monastery exhibited a ratio of four nuns to every monk. Thus, the reported problems
with her and within that com- munity cannot be blamed on any mere “patriarchal”
or “male” con- siderations. Further, to charitably regard
her (and her ilk) as being
innocent victims, who have simply been “corrupted by the [exist- ing]
patriarchy” (cf. Harvey, 2000), would not
likely pass muster with the more courageous Tenzin Palmo, for one. For, all
indica- tions are that Jetsunma went voluntarily into the Tibetan Bud- dhist system,
knowingly increasing her own power at every step. In
fact, she allegedly explicitly pressured Penor Rinpoche for his rec- ognition
of her as an incarnation, before he wanted to give it. In- deed, she was
further reportedly initially openly disappointed when that reincarnation turned out to be of an “unknown” saint. At the time when she first met Rinpoche,
well prior to the formal recognition, she and her husband apparently almost
didn’t even know what Buddhism was (Sherrill, 2000). Nor would they likely have been
so eager to learn, one suspects, had doing so not in- creased their own stature
in the world.
Jetsunma and
many of her followers moved in the late ’90s from coastal Maryland to higher
ground in Arizona. That was done in
anticipation of the fulfillment of apocalyptic Hopi prophecies— her new boyfriend at the time was an American Indian shaman—
that earthquakes, floods and famine
would strike the United States in
1999 (Sherrill, 2000).
As of this
writing, however, the U.S. thankfully remains very much geologically intact,
with no excess of flood water and no shortage of food. And if you’ve “felt the
earth move” recently, it probably didn’t register on the Richter scale.
After all that,
Penor Rinpoche could reasonably be feeling somewhat burned by his experiences
with Jetsunma and Steven Seagal—the latter of whose purported “divinity” was
not welcomed by many Buddhists. Indeed, in an interview with Martha Sherrill in
1997, Penor declared that he “would not be recognizing any more Americans as tulkus.”
So it looks like Richard Gere’s out of luck.
* * *
The tulku phenomenon itself has an interesting, and very human, history.
The system of
recognizing reincarnations was established at the beginning of the thirteenth
century by the followers of Dusum Khyenpa, the first Karmapa Lama. As the
religious influence of Tibet’s lamas came to be adapted for political purposes
through the centuries,
internally and via influence from China, the process of recognizing new tulkus was rather predictably affected.
The traditional method of scrutiny
whereby the young hope- fuls had to identify objects belonging to their past
incarna- tion was often neglected. It wasn’t
at all uncommon to have
two
or more candidates—each backed by a powerful faction— openly and violently [italics added] challenging one well- known tulku seat (Lehnert, 1998).
Such intrigues
are by no means buried merely in the dim and distant past. For, when it came
time to recognize a new (Seven- teenth) Karmapa Lama in the 1980s and ’90s,
that allegedly en- tailed:
·
An attempt to steal (literally) the previous Karmapa’s
heart during his 1981 cremation ceremony
·
A short-lived claim by a Woodstock, NY, tulku that his wife was about to give birth to the reincarnated
Karmapa, dis- counted when she delivered a baby girl, as opposed to the
expected male reincarnation
·
Billions of mantra repetitions (as a probable delaying tac- tic)
enjoindered on devoted followers to allegedly “remove massive obstacles” before
the new incarnation could be re- vealed
·
An attempted coup d’état
for the leadership of the Karmapa lineage, with written replies to
it being initially smartly given on (unused) toilet paper
·
Reported naïve back-room deals with the calculating Chi- nese
government on the part of one of the four “highly evolved” lineage holders responsible
for collectively recog- nizing the next Karmapa. The involved lama had as his em- issary to China one Akong
Tulku—Chögyam’s old nemesis
—who came to be regarded as “the
main felon splitting the lineage” (Lehnert, 1998)
·
Alleged “forgery, deceit,
and a looming fight right
at the top of the lineage,” with the high-ranking lamas there report-
edly displaying “greed, pride, and lust for power”: “People were being
intimidated, forced to sign petitions; some had been beaten.” Against that was
heard the voice of one (European) Lama Ole Nydahl (Lehnert, 1998).
Interestingly,
Trungpa himself, in 1984, had Osel Tendzin write to Vajradhatu members, warning
them against Nydahl. Indeed, in that missive, Nydahl’s teaching style was
described as being “contrary to everything we have been taught and have come to
recognize as genuine.” Trungpa was further of the opinion that “there is some
real perversion of the buddhadharma taking place by Mr. Ny- dahl” (Rawlinson,
1997).
Pot. Kettle. Tibetan
Buddhist. Black
·
Finally, two different children, each being touted as the Karmapa
by different factions within the global Tibetan Buddhist community. One had the support of the politically manipulative Chinese
government and of the duped Dalai Lama. (The latter, having too-quickly given
informal ap- proval to the recognition on the basis of reportedly false evi- dence,
could not backtrack and admit that he was wrong.) The other was recognized
after a more sincere search
Updates to that continuing dispute
exist at www.karmapa- controversy.org.
Interestingly,
one of the aforementioned four lineage holders claims to have found the
reincarnated Trungpa in eastern Tibet. That same holder, however, was not only
apparently making deals with the government of China, but had also recognized
over three hundred other tulkus within
the space of a mere few years previ- ously.
The fact that
most of those came from an area bordering his own primary seat in Tibet (Lehnert,
1998), however, casts a certain doubt....
Still, if Trungpa’s
really back in circulation, “Let’s
party!”
* * *
It is not only “avant-garde” lamas
who have “bent” the rules which one would otherwise have reasonably assumed
were governing their behaviors. Rather, as June Campbell (1996) has noted from
her own experience:
[I]n the 1970s, I traveled
throughout Europe and North America as a Tibetan interpreter, providing the
link, through language, between my
lama-guru [Kalu Rinpoche, 1905 – 1989] and his many students. Subsequently he
re- quested that I become his sexual consort, and take part in secret
activities with him, despite the fact that to outsiders he was a very
high-ranking yogi-lama of the Kagya lineage who, as abbot of his own monastery,
had taken vows of celi- bacy. Given that he was one of the oldest lamas in
exile at that time, had personally spent fourteen years in solitary re- treat,
and counted amongst his students the highest ranking lamas in Tibet, his own
status was unquestioned in the Ti- betan community, and his holiness attested
to by all....
[I]t was plainly emphasized that any indiscretion [on my part] in
maintaining silence over our affair might lead to madness, trouble, or even death [e.g., via magical curses
placed upon the indiscreet one].
And how did the
compassionate, bodhisattva-filled Tibetan Buddhist community react to such
allegations?
[M]any rejected out of hand Campbell’s claims
as sheer fabri- cation coming from somebody eager to gain fame at the ex-
pense of a deceased lama (Lehnert, 1998; italics added).
* * *
Well, enough of Buddhist sex. How about some Buddhist
violence?
More
specifically, in keeping with such extreme contemporary brutality as is regularly portrayed
in tulku Steven Seagal’s
movies, it has been whispered that
in old Tibet ... the lamas were the
allies of feudalism and un- smilingly inflicted medieval punishments such as
blinding and flogging unto death (Hitchens, 1998).
Visiting the Lhasa [Tibet] museum,
[journalist Alain Jacob] saw “dried and tanned children’s skins, various
amputated human limbs, either dried or preserved, and numerous in- struments of
torture that were in use until a few decades ago”....
These were the
souvenirs and instruments of the van- ished lamas, proof, Jacob notes, that
under the Buddhist re- ligious rule in Tibet “there survived into the middle of
the twentieth century feudal practices which, while serving a well-established
purpose, were nonetheless chillingly cruel.”
The
“well-established purpose”? Maintaining social or- der in a church-state
(Clark, 1980).
The early
twentieth-century, Viennese-born explorer Joseph Rock minced even fewer words:
“One must take for granted that
every Tibetan, at least in this part of the world, was a robber sometime in his
life,” he sardonically observed of the Goloks [tribe]. “Even the lamas are not
averse to cutting one’s throat, although they would be horrified at killing a dog, or perhaps even a vermin”
(Schell, 2000).
The caliber of
monks today has not, it seems, radically im- proved:
[O]ver 90% of those who wear the
robes [in India, and else- where] are “frauds” in the sense the questioners
would con- note by “fraud.” The idea that the monk is more perfect than the
non-monk is inveterate, and it is kindled
by the monks themselves. If perfection is to mean greater dedication to the
search for spiritual emancipation, then there is undoubtedly more of it among
the monks. But in terms
of human morality and of human intellect, monks
are nowhere more perfect than lay people (Bharati, 1980; italics
added).
Far too many men become Buddhist
monks, because it’s a good life and they have devotion. The Dalai Lama has pub-
licly stated that only ten out of one hundred monks are true candidates (Mackenzie, 1999).
Likewise for Japanese
Zen:
It seemed to me that most of the
monks [at Suienji] were proud of their position, lazy, stupid, greedy, angry,
confused, or some combination. Mainly they were the sons of temple priests
putting in their obligatory training time so that they could follow in daddy’s
footsteps. They listened to radios, drank at night and had pinups on the wall.
What they were really into, though,
was power trips.
It’s what got them off. The senior monks were always pushing
around the junior monks, who in turn
were pushing around the ones that came after them (in Chadwick, 1994).
The
observations of a Thai Buddhist monk, in Ward (1998), at a monastery run by
Ajahn Chah, are no more flattering:
The farang [Westerners] at this wat [monastery] who call themselves
monks are nothing but a bunch of social rejects who have found a place where
they can get free food, free shelter and free respect. They are complacent and
their only concern is their perks at the top end of the hierarchy.
For more of the
inside story on Tibetan Buddhism, consult Trimondi and Trimondi’s (2003) The
Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism.
* * *
No discussion of Tibetan Buddhism
would be complete without mention of T. Lobsang Rampa (d. 1981).
Rampa was the
author, in the 1950s and ’60s, of more than a dozen popular books concerning
his claimed experiences growing up as a lama in Tibet. Among them, we find 1956’s
best-selling The Third Eye, concerning an operation
allegedly undergone by Rampa to open up his clairvoyant faculties.
In the midst of
that literary success, however, it was discov- ered that Rampa was in fact none
other than a pen name for the Irish “son of a plumber,” Cyril Hoskins (Bharati, 1974).
Hoskins himself
had never been to Tibet.
But then, the average Tibetan, in
Hoskins’ day at least, had never seen
indoor plumbing.
So perhaps
it all evens out.
* * *
As might be expected, radically
enlightened practitioners of Ti- betan Buddhism counted
through the ages and today
are as rare as they are on
any other path.
When I asked an old lama from Tibet
about whether these ten stages [of awakening
to Buddha Nature,
i.e., bhumis] are in fact a part of the practice, he
said, “Of course they really exist.” But when I inquired who in his tradition
had attained them, he replied wistfully, “In these difficult times I cannot
name a single lama who has mastered
even the second
stage” (Kornfield, 2000).
Undaunted, the
current Dalai Lama himself keeps to a busy schedule of spiritually enlightening
meditation—six hours per day. He also continues the non-violent political
activities which brought him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
Of course,
having so little spare time would undoubtedly help to force the proper
prioritization of one’s activities. Nevertheless:
Repeated attempts to get a response
to this [critical] article from His Holiness through his New York media
representa- tive were met with a “too busy” response. Yet the New York Times reported that the Tibetan
leader somehow found time for a photo op with pop star Ricky Martin (Zupp, 2003).
So it goes, when one is “Livin’
La Vida Lama.”
Regardless, His Holiness has left us with at least one eminent-
ly good idea to live by, in sloughing through the sorry state of af- fairs that
calls itself “spirituality” in this world:
“Whenever exploitation, sexual abuse
or money abuse hap- pen,” the Dalai Lama says, “make them public” (Leonard, 2001).
In the next
chapter we will meet a group of courageous people who did exactly that, and
more.
CHAPTER XXIII
UP
THE ASANA
(YOGI AMRIT DESAI)
Yogi Desai is an enlightened Master with penetrating insight and intuition (in Desai, 1981; self-published).
YOGI AMRIT DESAI IS THE ORIGINATOR of
Kripalu Yoga, and for- merly the head
of the Kripalu Center in Lenox, Massachusetts—by now, the “largest and most
established yoga retreat in North America.” How he came to found that center,
and then be report- edly forced to leave by his own students, we shall soon
see.
Desai grew up
in India, meeting his guru, Swami Kripalva- nandji—a claimed kundalini yoga
master—there in 1948, at the age of sixteen. Kripalvananda’s guru, in turn, was
mythologically believed to be “Lord Lakulish, the twenty-eighth incarnation of
Lord Shiva” (Cope, 2000). Interestingly,
Kripalvananda is said to have practiced “yogic masturbation,” i.e.,
masturbation in the con- text of meditation, for the purpose of raising
energies up the spine (Elias, 2002).
Amrit himself
came to America as an art student in 1960, and described (1981) his discovery
of Kripalu Yoga, while married and living in Philadelphia in 1970, as follows:
192
[D]uring my routine practice of
hatha yoga postures I found my body moving spontaneously and effortlessly while
at the same time I was being drawn into the deepest meditation I had ever
experienced. The power and intelligence that
guided me through this seemingly paradoxical experience of meditation
and motion left me in awe and bliss. That morn- ing my body moved of its own
volition, without my direction, automatically performing an elaborate series of
flowing mo- tions. Many of these “postures” [i.e., asanas]
I had never seen even in
any yoga book before.
As Swami Kripalvananda explained it (in Desai, 1981):
[A]ll of these innumerable postures, movements, and mudras [hand gestures] ... occur
automatically when the evolutionary
energy of prana has been awakened in
the body of a yogi.... This is an integral part of the awakening of kundalini.
Desai gave the name
“Kripalu” to the system of yoga which he elaborated from his initial experience
and others following it. The name was bestowed in honor of his guru, whose
special grace Am- rit considered to be responsible for that discovery.
Following that
awakening, Desai founded his first ashram in 1970, and established a second one
in Pennsylvania in 1975. The Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health was created in
Massachusetts in 1983, with branches in North America, Europe and India.
From those
centers, Yogi Desai (or “Gurudev”) dispensed both discipline and wisdom, for
the spiritual benefit of his followers:
As often as possible tell yourself,
“I want nothing. I want to be nothing. I brought nothing with me, nor will I
take any- thing when I go. I want to accomplish nothing for myself. I give my
life to God and my guru”....
[A]ll the guru
wants is your happiness and growth (De- sai, 1985).
Amrit’s
disciple Rajendra (1976) further explained the details of life in the
community:
Gurudev in no way censures sexual
love—only the abuse of it. Married
couples at the ashram may have a moderate sex life without diverting the course
of their sadhana. Unmar- ried persons
are asked to refrain.
In the face of
those and other restrictions and assurances, loy- al ashram leaders still
reluctantly allowed that
[i]n a moment of paranoid
self-indulgence [an ashram resi- dent] may question the guru’s honorable
spiritual intentions (Rajendra, 1976).
Indeed. As they
say, however, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get
you.”
Thus, a decade
after his founding of Kripalu, still married and encouraging strict celibacy for his unmarried
disciples, Desai found himself caught in a scandal. Such
controversy was of his own mak- ing, and indeed arose from the discovery that
he had secretly been demonstrating his “penetrating insight” ... to the
receptive vessels of three of his female students (Carlson,
2002a). In the wake of that, he resigned as spiritual director of
Kripalu in 1994. Or, more accurately, he
was reportedly forced to leave by the residents of the ashram which he himself had
founded.
Bravo!!
Following that
departure, Kripalu restructured its organiza- tion to be led by a professional
management team, “several of whom are former ashram residents.” It has thereby
become “the first traditional yoga ashram founded
on the guru-disciple model to transition to a new paradigm of
spiritual education” (Kripalu, 2003).
Of course, anyone
who has ever worked under “professional management teams” knows that they, too,
are far from perfect, at times to the point of obvious pathology. But at least
it’s a step in the right direction.
* * *
Kripalu, wisely sans Desai, now
serves over 15,000 guests per year.
As to Yogi
Amrit himself, after a period of retirement he re- sumed teaching, and was
recently invited to be the “leading spiri- tual teacher at a new ashram” to be
founded by Deepak Chopra (Cohen, 2000a). He
presently teaches in Salt Springs, Florida.
Not
surprisingly, Desai’s current bio at www.amrityoga.com
makes no mention of the Kripalu Center connection or scandal. (Likewise,
there is no word within the History section at www.kri
palu.org as to why Desai left them.) Indeed, on that new site he is
referred to with deep respect as
“Gurudev”—i.e., “beloved teacher” or “divine guru”—as he was at Kripalu during
his heyday.
And thereby are
the next generation of fresh-faced, idealistic young spiritual seekers served
old, vinegary wine in new bottles— unaware, more often than not, of the history
of that sour vintage.
CHAPTER XXIV
SODOMY AND GOMORRAH
Whenever you have an individual who
claims a direct pipe- line with God and has no accountability, if you don’t
have a [so-called] cult today, you will have one tomorrow (Geisler, 1991).
A [so-called] destructive cult
distinguishes itself from a nor- mal social or religious group by subjecting
its members to persuasion or other damaging influences to keep them in the group....
Members are
thoroughly indoctrinated with the belief that if they ever do leave, terrible
consequences will befall them (Hassan, 1990).
CHARACTERISTICS COMMONLY SEEN in
so-called cults include the presence of an infallible leader, and a prohibition
on questioning the teachings. Hypnotic chanting or the like is frequently
fingered as a means of inducing a suggestible, trance-like state, and thus of
controlling the minds of the followers. Further, one often finds a “hidden agenda,”
whereby it is not fully explained to prospective
196
members of the group as to what they
may be asked to do, should they choose to join.
In addition,
residents of the community will often lead mi- nutely regulated existences—even
to the point of control of their sex lives—their hours being filled with
organization-related activi- ties, with no time for reflection as to the
morality of their actions. (“Keep members so busy they don’t have time to think
and check things out” [Hassan, 2000].) Plus, not infrequently, devotees have
feelings of persecution, and associated beliefs that “the world is out
to get them,” via conspiracies to destroy the organization. They may also be
required to report or confess their “thoughts, feelings and activities” to
their superiors.
Also, one
regularly finds a lack of proper medical care for even the most devoted
members, and indoctrinated phobias to prevent followers from leaving. Plus, we
see the suppression of information harmful to the group, and the presence of
apocalyptic teachings, with only the members of the sect being “saved” from
eternal dam- nation. The group, that is, is the “one, true Way,” allowing its
members to conceive of no happiness outside of itself, and keeping them in sway
via the fear of losing their salvation should they con- sider leaving.
Conversely, followers who breach the rigid rules and regulations of the
organization or ask critical questions of the leader are at risk of being
kicked out of the group, or “excommuni- cated.”
Speaking of the Roman Catholic Church....
[U]nlike Judaism, Catholicism
embraces and espouses the belief that it is the one and only true faith (Bruni and Bur- kett, 2002).
And of its divinely inspired
leader, then:
A pope ... believes, along with many
hundreds of millions of the faithful, that he is God’s representative on
Earth....
The theologian
John Henry Newman, Britain’s most famous convert to Catholicism in the
nineteenth century, de- livered a devastating verdict ... : “[A long-lived pope] becomes a god,
has no one to contradict him, does not know facts, and does cruel things
without meaning it” (Cornwell, 1999).
Even for that
“god’s” underlings or inner circle, though, the distance from God, in the eyes
of their flock, is hardly any greater:
We were taught [that Catholic
priests] were Christ’s repre- sentatives on Earth (in Boston
Globe, 2003).
Papal
infallibility (on matters of doctrine, faith and morals) was decreed by Pope
Pius IX in 1870. The relatively recent nature of that “perfection” may perhaps
allow us to more easily under- stand the behaviors of at least one of his
forebears:
In the tenth century a dissolute
teenager could be elected pope (John XII) because of his family connections and
die a decade later in the bed of a married woman (Wills,
2000).
Died happy, though....
John XII was so enthralled by one of
his concubines, Rain- era, that he entrusted her with much of the
administration of the Holy See (Allen, 2004).
“One of his concubines.” Among how many? Some popes have all the luck.
Saint
Augustine, too, fathered a child
out of wedlock as a teen- ager, living with its mother
for fifteen years,
and practicing contra- ception as a Manichean during
that time (Wills, 2000). He further never
went to confession—a sacrament given only once in a life- time, in those bygone
days (Wills, 1972). Priestly celibacy was like- wise only a medieval demand,
enjoindered to ensure that Church properties did not fall into the hands of
offspring, as inheritance:
[I]n the beginning [of the Church],
there was no mandatory celibacy. Saint Peter, the first pope, was married. Pope
An- astasius I was the father of Pope Innocent, Pope Sergius III begat Pope
John XI and Pope Theodore I was the son of a bishop (Bruni
and Burkett, 2002).
More recently,
a survey was conducted in 1980 by one Richard Wagner. It covered fifty
ostensibly celibate priestly respondents— half of whom “knew they were gay
before ordination.” The survey found that those holy men “averaged 226 partners
in sex, a num- ber reached only because 22% of them had over 500” (Wills, 2000).
Surprised? Or:
Think of how many partners they might have had if they weren’t celibate and chaste!
In any case,
the altar boys groped, seduced and sodomized by various Catholic priests
certainly did not have everything they might be asked to do for the Church
explained to them up front.
Nor behind.
Proper medical
care for those who have given their lives to the cause? Not if you’re
Thérèse of Lisieux
(1873 – 1897), whose power- enjoying, vindictive prioress
delayed sending for crisis medical help. She further restricted one doctor’s
visits from his suggestion that he come every day to three times in total, and
forbade injec- tions of morphia as Thérèse lay dying of tuberculosis (Furlong, 1987).
More recently,
in the 1930s, a girl placed in an industrial school in Ireland run by the
so-called Sisters of Mercy told her story:
I had a lot of abscesses. I couldn’t
walk at one stage. I kept
passing out, particularly at Mass in
the mornings. When I was about nine, I was very sick—I had a big lump under my
arm, and they had to put poultices on it. They wouldn’t call a doctor, because
they’d have had to pay for that (in Raftery and O’Sullivan, 2001).
Likewise for
the life of nuns in Massachusetts, as one lay member recorded:
I’d see priests driving around in
Cadillacs. I remember read- ing a story about how nuns didn’t have full health
insurance and was just infuriated by the injustice in that (in Boston Globe, 2003).
The free
exchange of information, beyond the boundaries of the organization, for petitioners to receive honest answers to
even embarrassing questions? Not divinely likely:
Cardinals take an oath to the pope
to safeguard the church from scandal—to prevent
bad information from becoming public (Berry and Renner, 2004; italics
added).
Honest mistakes, incompetence,
negligence and intentional wrongdoing are all abhorrent to the higher
leadership [of the Roman Catholic Church]. All are denied, covered up and ra-
tionalized with equal zeal. The clerical world truly believes that it has been established by God and that its members are
singled out and favored by the Almighty. Higher authority
figures are regarded with a mixture of
fear and awe by all below them. The circles of power are closed, the tightest
be- ing among those existing among bishops. Secrecy provides
a layer of insulation between the
one in authority and any- one who might be tempted to question its exercise (Doyle,
2003).
Freedom to question
the teachings? Please.
The French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin was so reviled by the Holy Office for his vision of a spirituality in
harmony with human evolution that his major works, which have reached millions
of readers, were suppressed in his lifetime. Karl Rahner, who argued
that theology should
develop in the spirit of a time, and Yves Congar, who emphasized the role of laypeople in an evolving church, were
marginalized in the 1950s by Pius XII, who had no use for their views (Berry and Renner, 2004).
Under the same
intellectual oppression, de Chardin was actu- ally given the choice of either
being exiled to the United States, or living under surveillance in a retreat
house; he chose the former. One American Jesuit compared that treatment of
Teilhard, and of others who had been influenced by his work, to a “Stalinist
purge” (Cornwell, 1999).
By doctrine, it was still [in the
1950s and early ’60s, prior to the Vatican II council] a sin to read any book
on the [Index Librorum Prohibitorum]
list, including Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, and especially Darwin (Sennott,
1992).
[T]he Anti-Modernist Oath, [enacted
by Pope Pius X in 1910 and] sworn to this day in modified form by Catholic
ordi- nands ... required acceptance of all papal teaching, and ac- quiescence
at all times to the meaning and sense of such teaching as dictated by the pope There was no possibility
of any form of dissent, even
interior. The conscience of the person taking the oath was forced to accept not
only what Rome proposed, but even the sense in which Rome interpret- ed it. Not
only was this contrary to the traditional Catholic understanding of the role of
conscience, but it was a form of thought
control that was unrivalled even under fascist and communist regimes
(Cornwell, 1999; italics added).
Nor has the situation
improved in more recent years:
In the first year of his papacy,
[John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla] revoked the teaching license of Father Hans Küng, the Swiss
theologian who has challenged papal infallibility.... In 1997 Wojtyla
excommunicated the Sri Lankan writer-priest Tissa Balasuriya for diluting Roman doctrinal orthodoxy: Balasuri- ya’s writing had cast doubts on the doctrines of
original sin and the virginity of the Mother of God (Cornwell, 1999).
By contrast:
Rome never put Hitler’s writings on
the Index; the Führer until the end of his reign was allowed to remain a member
of the Church, i.e., he was not excommunicated (Lewy,
2000).
Interested in having the truth be known at all costs?
Right....
Two ladies, worried about their
pastor’s overtures to teenage boys, discovered that he had come to their town
from a treatment center after a plea
bargain. A boy he had molested in a
previous parish cut off a finger and received a settle- ment. When the ladies
asked that Father be removed, the bishop not only refused their request but
threatened a slan- der suit if they made a public issue of it (Berry, 1992).
Or, as the
journalist Michael Harris (1991) confided to a vic- tim of alleged clergy
sexual abuse who was about to go public with his story, in cautioning the
latter about the associated police- and government-aided cover-up around the
Christian Brothers’ Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland:
[T]here are powerful forces involved
in this story, for whom the last thing that is wanted is the truth. I don’t
believe that many people will be congratulating either you or me for bringing
this sordid affair into the public eye.
In an interview [in May of 2002]
Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, widely seen as a leading
candidate to be the next pope, addressed the American [pedophilia] cri- sis. He
blamed the American press for “persecution” of the Church. “Only in this fashion can I explain the ferocity [of
attacks on the esteem of the Catholic
Church] that reminds
me of the times of Nero and
Diocletian, and more recently, of Stalin and Hitler” [he said]....
Cardinal
Norberto Rivera Carrera of Mexico City ... ech- oed Rodriguez’s comments on the
American crisis. “Not only in the United States but also in other parts of the
world, one can see underway an orchestrated plan for striking at the prestige
of the Church. Not a few journalists have confirmed for me the existence of
this organized campaign,” he said (Allen, 2004).
Archbishop
Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati had earlier charac- terized the media exposure of
Catholic clergy abuse as deriving from a “corporate vendetta” against the
Church. Father Charles Fiore, meanwhile, suggested that pedophiles had been
planted in the priestly ranks by liberals determined to undermine Christian-
ity. Conversely, he expressed the
belief that a purge of communists would stop the conspiracy
against his holy organization (Bruni and Burkett, 2002). And as late as
2002, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) weighed in with his
own, equally facile “conspiracy theory,” of there allegedly being a “planned
campaign” to discredit the Roman Catholics.
[Vatican affairs writer Orazio]
Petrosillo indicated three groups in the United States that may have inspired
such a campaign: “Masonic lodges,” “Jewish lobbies,” and “groups of free
thought and free morals” such as gays (Allen, 2004).
But “impure,”
menstruating women too though, right? Why stop at gays and Jews—not to mention
(gasp!) “free thinkers”— when you’re desperately searching for scapegoats to
blame for your own family’s cruel sins and inexcusable indifference to the
suffer- ing of others? When even the crusading, witch-hunting, Inquisi- tioning
Catholic Church is, in its own mind, a “victim,” you know you are living in a
strange world indeed.
In reality,
even a minimal awareness of the extant media ex- posés of Eastern guru-figures
would have sufficed to demonstrate that both the “God-inspired Church” and its
“demonic” competitors are being exposed
in direct proportion to the sheer quantity of their
alleged abuses. The Freemasons, Jews and gays—“surprisingly”— cannot be blamed
for that, any more than an “anti-Asian” bias could be asserted to be the source
of any “conspiracy” to expose the alleged abuses of our world’s gurus!
(Note: Even
without any conscious effort on my own part, it turns out that around 45% of the figures covered at any depth in this
book are Westerners. “Authentic spirituality” typically in- volves Eastern philosophy. And the
guru-disciple phenomenon, in general, comes to the West from the East. Thus, a
greater percent- age of the “best” of its practitioners are predictably going
to be from the East than from the
West. One therefore cannot reasona- bly hope for a split closer to 50/50 than
this book represents. Were I aware of
any comparable exposés of misbehaviors within guru- disciple-like relationships
among Freemasons, Jews, gays or her- maphrodites [cf. Sai Baba], where the
guru-figures were widely viewed as purveying “authentic, transformative
spirituality” and as being among the
“best” in their respective paths, I would hap- pily have included them.)
Nor though,
with regard to alleged biases, can recent exposés of the inhumane conditions
faced by animals in kosher slaughter- houses be rationally viewed as an
“anti-Semitic attack” on Jewish religious practices (in Simon, 2004) ... oy vey!
Further,
regarding the convenient claim that Judaism avoids the “cultist” tendencies of,
for example, the Roman Catholic Church, by not claiming to be “the one and only
true faith,” thus allegedly allowing followers to leave the religion without
penalty:
In the Olam Ha-Ba [i.e., the
Messianic Age], the whole world will recognize the Jewish G-d as the only true
G-d, and the Jewish religion as the only true religion (Rich, 2001).
Could one have
expected any less, though, given the “chosen group” complex of the entire
tradition? Of course it’s “the one
true religion”! How could they be the “Chosen People” if it wasn’t?
By stark
contrast to such prevailing foolishness, blame- mongering and paranoia as the
above, Chapter 2 of Bruni and Burkett’s (2002)
A Gospel of Shame offers a
wonderfully coherent and insightful analysis of why the reluctantly apologetic
Catholic Church has justifiably fared so poorly in media presentations of its
wide-ranging sins. The same book offers by far the best explana- tion I have
found of the various sexual and social factors most likely to play a role in
creating the pedophilic orientation. It also contains the best documentation of
the initial deferential underre- porting of Catholic clergy abuse by the North
American media, showing claims of “anti-Catholic bias” in the same media to be
wholly unfounded.
For the
centuried misogyny, calculated power-grabs, general “stubborn resistance to the
truth” and associated widespread de- ceit in the Catholic Church, consult Garry
Wills’ (2000) surprising Papal Sin. For
the shameful history of anti-Semitism in the same organization, from its
highest leaders on down, see Cornwell’s (1999) Hitler’s Pope and Lewy’s (2000) The
Catholic Church and Nazi Germany. For the connection between the Vatican
and post- WWII “Nazi smuggling” in the fight against communism, refer to Aarons
and Loftus’ (1998) Unholy Trinity:
[Ante] Pavelić ... had been the
Poglavnik of “independent” Croatia, exercising comparable powers to the Führer
in Ger- many. He had even managed to keep the death machine op- erating almost
until the end, while the Germans were fran- tically dismantling theirs....
In a strange
reversal of roles, [Pavelić] castigated the Führer about the “lenient” treatment of German
Jews, boast- ing that in
comparison he had completely solved the Jewish question in Croatia while some
remained alive in the Third Reich....
The pope’s own attitude towards the murderous Ustashi [terrorist network] leader was more than benign
neglect.... Pius [XII] himself promised to give Pavelić his personal blessing
again. By this time, the Holy See possessed abun- dant evidence of the
atrocities committed by his regime.
Nor were other aspects
of that pope’s silent conduct
during the time of Hitler any
more praiseworthy:
It seems beyond any doubt ... that
if the churches had op- posed the killing and the persecution of the Jews, as
they opposed the killing of the congenitally insane and the sick, there would
have been no Final Solution (in Cornwell, 1999).
If
[Pius XII] is to take credit for the use of Vatican
extraterri- torial religious buildings as safe houses for Jews during
Germany’s occupation of Rome, then he should equally take blame for the use of
the same buildings as safe houses for Nazi and Ustash[i] criminals (Cornwell,
1999).
Or, as Settimia
Spizzichino, the sole survivor of the German roundup and deportation of Rome’s
Jews, put it in a 1995 inter- view with the BBC:
I came back from Auschwitz on my
own. I lost my mother, two sisters, a niece, and one brother. Pius XII could
have warned us about what was going to happen. We might have escaped from Rome and joined the partisans. He played right into the Germans’ hands. It all
happened right under his nose. But he was an anti-Semitic pope, a pro-German
pope. He didn’t take a single risk. And when they say the pope is like Jesus
Christ, it is not true. He did not save a single child. Nothing.
Of course, when
“Satan” is thus attacking holy men—as in the current pedophilia crisis—for
doing “God’s work,” there is a sure- fire defense for any believer. The same
defense could, indeed, be directed equally ineffectually against the present
book and author as well:
[W]e call down God’s power on the
[anti-Catholic] media (Cardinal Bernard Law, in [Boston
Globe, 2003]).
Controlling
their followers’ sex lives? Injunctions against con- traception and the regard
for fornication, contraception and homo- sexual activity as “mortal sins” will
certainly do that.
Many priests were disillusioned by
celibacy, which they saw as a mechanism of control, much akin to [the Church’s]
au- thoritarian attitude toward lay people’s sex lives (Berry, 1992).
Pius XII ... made the condemnation
of birth control resonate ceaselessly from classrooms, pamphlets, confessionals, with a
kind of hysterical insistence. Contraception was a mortal sin.
Its unrepenting practitioners were going to hell (Wills, 2000).
Not only were oral and anal
intercourse forbidden, but all varieties of stimulation or position were
counted unnatural except the man-on-top performance. The act with a single goal
[i.e., impregnation] was to have but a single mode of execution (Wills, 1972).
Nor was it
necessary to thus “execute” improperly—in “Catho- lic roulette” (i.e., sex
without contraception) or otherwise—in order for one to run afoul of the God of
Law:
[B]ack in the 1950s if you ate meat
on Friday, did not wear a hat or veil to church, or ate breakfast before
Communion, you could burn in hell for
these sins (in Boston Globe, 2003).
Oral sex and “eating meat,” out.
Hats on, and thou shalt not spill thy
seed upon the ground. And yet—
Dr. William Masters found that
ninety-eight out of the hun- dred priests he surveyed were masturbating (Wills, 2000).
And
you just know they’re sneaking food before Communion,
too!
[A]ll sensual indulgence was lumped
together [in the Deca- logue, i.e., the Ten Commandments] under the prohibition
against “coveting thy neighbor’s wife,” an approach which made gluttony,
laziness, and drunkenness directly sexual of- fenses—offenses where, according
to Catholic moralists of the old
school ... all sins were automatically grave or “mor- tal.” I knew a scrupulous
young man who was literally driv- en mad by this line of thought (Wills, 1972).
Are
the lives of residents further
being wholly given over to
the organization? Do they work long
days with no time left over to question the teachings or reflect on the consequences
of their own actions, having little contact with outside ideas? Evidently so:
The nuns lived minutely regulated
lives, their waking hours crammed with communal prayers, devotional exercises,
care of the convent and sacristy, a heavy teaching load, the train- ing of
children for first communion (or May procession, or confirmation), rehearsing
of the choir and coaching of altar boys. They
were not often allowed out of the convent—not
even to visit
libraries (Wills, 1972).
Repetitive, hypnotic chanting? Yes, yes, yes:
[Church] rites have great authority;
they hypnotize. Not least by their
Latinity. It is not certain, philologists say, that “hocus-pocus” is derived
from “Hoc est Corpus” in the Mass;
but the Latin phrases, often rhythmed, said in litanies and lists of saints’
names, replicated, coming at us in antiphonies and triple cries (Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus), had a
witchery in them, to hush or compel us as by incantation (Wills,
1972).
Apocalyptic beliefs? Let me count the Horsemen.
You are free,
of course, to leave the Church, along with its Masses, Communion and
confessionals, at any time ... provided that
you can face the indoctrinated phobia of eternal
damnation for your soul, in
dying with “mortal sins” unabsolved. In no way, that is, could you leave that
group and yet be happy and fulfilled, if any of what you had been taught were
true.
Harassment and
ostracism of those who dare to expose the corruption of the sacred Church?
Naturally:
The [Patty Hanson] family filed a
lawsuit against the Dio- cese of Phoenix
[for the alleged
sexual abuse of their children at the hands of their Father].
They got nasty letters saying they were ruthless liars peddling trumped-up
accusations and exaggerated suffering for a little limelight and a lot of cash.
They got harassing phone calls at 3 a.m. and anony- mous death threats (Bruni and Burkett, 2002).
All of which is
to say that the closer one looks at alleged “cults” versus “legitimate” religions, the less difference one can find between them. (Cf. “We define ‘cult’
as a group where the leader is unchallengeable and considered infallible” [Kramer and Alstad, 1993]. Also compare Robert
Lifton’s [1989] eight characteristics of any
totalistic group. Then judge for yourself whether or not the Catholic Church fits every one of them. Even with regard
to the “loading of language,” it is obvious that the Catholic definitions of
“confession” and “communion” differ significantly from how the words are used
outside of the religion. That is so, just as surely as Scientology’s
definitions of its key words differ from how the same terms are used outside
that organization. Further, when the con- fession of mortal sins, as a means of
ensuring one’s salvation, ex- tends down to masturbation, there is nothing
healthy about that claimed need for disclosure, any more than writing up
self-reports for one’s superiors to read in any so-called cult could be
healthy.) That elusive difference is even aside from Pope John Paul’s
explicit endorsement of Mexico’s Father Maciel and his allegedly
sexually abusive Legionaries of Christ organization. For there, to exit that
group—not merely to leave the religion in general—was explicitly to lose one’s
salvation. Yet reportedly, in the same environment:
Maciel’s ruse about getting
permission for his sexual urges from Pope Pius XII was [told] to bewildered seminarians,
some barely past puberty, in order
to sexually abuse them and satisfy himself (Berry and Renner, 2004).
Or, closer to
home, as a Cajun Catholic woman alleged of her experiences at the hands of her
own parish priest:
I was told [by Father John] that I
had been chosen by God to help him with his studies of sex because he was responsible for helping adults
and he didn’t know anything about it (in Berry,
1992).
[Tim] said nothing when Father Jay
took him into the bath- room at his parents’ house and asked him to perform
oral sex....
Father Jay told
the boy: “This is between you and me. This is something special. God would
approve.” And Tim be- lieved him (Bruni and
Burkett, 2002).
Comparable
“chosen by God” lines have, of course, been used by many a guru-figure on his
(or her) own bewildered disciples, to get them to put out. As has, perhaps, the
trusted, “unimpeachable character” of other “men of God”:
[Father Bruce] Ritter was ...
America’s answer to Mother Teresa....
When Father
Bruce turned his attention to one of [his helpers at the misled Covenant House
mission for street kids
—the “McDonald’s of child care”],
they often described feel- ing a kind of “glow” or “warm light.” In many ways,
their re- ligious devotion was not only to God but to Father Bruce—a cult of
personality around the man whose mission they car- ried out (Sennott, 1992).
“America’s
answer to Mother Teresa” was later accused of “sexually abusing or sexually
approaching” more than a dozen of the boys in his care—a charge he denies.
Other respected
Catholic holy men, however, have been able to
counter less of their own alleged indiscretions:
The priest engaged in anal
intercourse, oral sex, group sex with two boys at a time, plied them with pot,
had a dog lick their genitals (Berry, 1992).
Elsewhere, too:
Nearly two hundred people [one of
them just four years old at the time]
who say they were raped or fondled by [the now- deceased Rev. John J.] Geoghan
have filed claims against him and his supervisors in the last several years.
Experts be- lieve he probably
molested three to four times as many peo- ple as have come forward....
By most
accounts at least fifteen hundred priests [by now, over four thousand (Zoll, 2005)] have faced public accu- sations of
sexual misconduct with minors since the mid- 1980s (Boston
Globe, 2003).
Father Anthony Corbin ... confessed
to having had sex with an eighth-grade boy. Corbin dressed his victim in a
loincloth to resemble Christ headed for the crucifix[ion] (Bruni and Burkett, 2002).
Some of what was done [by the
Catholic Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy] was of a quite
exceptional deprav- ity, so that terms like “sexual abuse” are too weak to
convey it. For example ... the account of a man who as a boy was a particular
favorite of some Christian Brothers at Tardun [Australia] who competed as to
who could rape him one hun- dred times first, his account of being in terrible
pain, bleed- ing and bewildered (Raftery and O’Sullivan, 2001).
With “holiness”
and “purity” like that, who needs obscenity? With conscienceless “saints” and
“representatives of God on Earth” like these, who needs demonic sinners?
The
family-incest-like attempted cover-ups of alleged Catholic clergy sexual abuse
further show quite brutally how little the sup- posed “checks and balances”
within that same system actually work. So, too, do the related and utterly
cruel attempts to discredit the victims, and the closing of the upper clerical
ranks against the latter. (Thomas Doyle characterized the Church’s response to
that reported abuse as involving “a defrauding, a stonewalling, and out-
right lying to the people” [in Berry and Renner, 2004].) For there, offending
priests, even those with known and extensive
histories of sexual abuse, were more
likely to simply be transferred to another parish—if not simultaneously
promoted, suspended with pay, or
retired with pension—than to be meaningfully censured. That was done even after
the violated families had been explicitly guaran- teed by religious superiors that specific, appropriate steps would be
taken to ensure that the abuse would never happen
again. (The same promises
were, of course, later grossly broken.)
Many argued that the hierarchy’s handling
of abusive priests revealed systemic problems with
their Church. “It isn’t just the cardinal; it’s the way we operate There
are structural
issues. What is it that has made us
priests be so [unwilling to] speak out when something awful is happening, and not to cover up?” (Boston Globe, 2003).
Amazingly, even
after the Inquisition, even after the wanton burning of witches at the stake,
even after countless holy wars and crusades, the depths of cruelty and evil
perpetrated by our world’s “safe,” traditional religions—never mind its
potentially harmful nontraditional groups—still surprises us. Yet, there is
nothing whatsoever “new” in something like the recent Catholic scandals. That
is so, first when compared with the fear-ridden constraints and “skillful”
cruelties of the centuried guru game, and the ram- pant alleged sexual abuse by
“divine” gurus of their own disciples, in “compassionate, tolerant” Buddhism
and elsewhere. It is also true when viewed in terms of the Church’s own
millennia of ca- nonical laws directed toward (and thus admitting the existence
of) pedophilia among their clergy.
When Pope Alexander VI [d. 1503]
marked the final victory of Catholic
Spain over the Moors, he did so not with a Mass at St. Peter’s but with a party
in the piazza in front of the church. Flagons of wine flowed among the honored
guests, women from Rome’s most elegant brothels offered their ser- vices and
children were passed freely among bishops and priests celebrating Catholicism’s
latest triumph with a sex- ual bacchanalia (Bruni
and Burkett, 2002).
If we have
learned one thing specifically from the Catholic Church, though, it is that
there is no hope whatsoever of our world’s religions changing for the better,
without their evils being publicly exposed:
No problem is ever solved discreetly
any more, especially in the Catholic Church. The problems are only solved when
the Catholic people say out loud and on the record what a lot of them are thinking privately, and aim their message directly
at the
religious leadership (Andrew Greeley, in [Berry, 1992]).
And even then,
the scandals which had first surfaced in the late 1980s and early ’90s raised
their heads again around the turn of the century,
in a new wave of accusations
of clergy sexual abuse, substantially identical to those
which were thought to have been properly addressed by that revered leadership a
decade earlier. And both of those waves, sadly, have only gone to show how
these “holy” organizations will typically close ranks and fight tooth and nail,
in an “ordeal by litigation” directed at their already shattered victims. For
they must, above all, protect the virginal public repu- tation of their “divine
institution,” through which God speaks so uniquely.
Conversely:
If there are any heroes in this
squalid tale, they are the vic- tims, who found their voice, who found the
courage, after years of suffering in silence and isolation, to step into the
light and say, as one did, “This happened to me, and this is wrong” (Boston Globe, 2003).
And not only is it wrong,
but it must stop.
CHAPTER XXV
OF CABBAGES AND NATURE SPRITES
(FINDHORN
COMMUNITY: PETER AND EILEEN CADDY)
“The time has come,” the Caddys said “To channel many thoughts:
Of Moray Firth—and trailer parks Of
tiny elves—and Scots—
Of why the cabbages grow large—
And whether Swedes are hot”
IN NOVEMBER
OF 1962, Peter and Eileen Caddy settled with their
three young sons and a friend, Dorothy Maclean, near the coast of the Moray
Firth in northeast Scotland. There they lived, down the road from Aberdeen and Inverness, in a house trailer on a parcel
of land destined to become the first seed of the Findhorn Community.
Prior to that, Peter, a former military
officer, had followed
his own guru-figure for five years—a woman who was also his second wife, Sheena.
To join them as a disciple, Eileen had left her own husband and children. Soon after that departure, “stricken with
212
guilt and remorse,” she began
hearing voices, i.e., “guidance.” The believed source of those voices is
obvious in the title of Eileen’s first
book: God Spoke to Me. Later presumed
channelings by her included “transmissions from Saint-Germain [and] Sir Francis
Ba- con” (Hawken, 1976).
Peter and
Eileen later split from Sheena and, by 1957, were managing a hotel in Forres,
Scotland, which building was later to become part of the Findhorn community.
They were then
transferred from there to another ailing hotel to resurrect it. And, having
been suddenly terminated from that position, made their new home in the
Findhorn Bay Caravan (i.e., Trailer) Park, adjacent to a garbage dump.
In accord with
Eileen’s inner guidance, the pioneers estab- lished a small garden in the “sand
and scrub” of the trailer park in 1965.
[T]o the astonishment of experts,
their results were phenom- enal, producing plants whose variety and vigor could
not be conventionally explained (Findhorn, 1980).
That
“unconventional” success was indeed soon revealed to be ostensibly due to the
ability of community members, and Dorothy in particular, to “talk to the
plants” and nature spirits/devas. Addi- tional gardening
advice came from an Edinburgh man who “had experiences of nature beings, which
took the form of elves and fauns, and ... Pan himself” (Riddell, 1990).
The outcome of
all that was the forty-pound cabbages for which
the community first became famous.
By the
mid-’70s, however, when Peter stopped working in the garden, many of the
phenomenal aspects of the vegetation disap- peared.
The growth here was fantastic to
demonstrate to Peter Cad- dy and to others that it was possible. Now we know it
is pos- sible to work with the Nature Kingdom, but we no longer have the need
to produce a plant where it won’t normally grow (in Hawken, 1976).
The
contemporary American laying-on-of-hands healer Barba- ra Ann Brennan describes
(1993) relevant aspects of her own later
extended stay in the Findhorn Community:
When I was there, I stood on a
nature power point called Randolph’s Leap, a place near Findhorn where the
Druids are supposed to have worshiped and communed with nature spirits. I asked
to have access to the nature spirits.
[After] about a
month ... I started seeing little nature spirits [or sprites] everywhere I
went. They would follow me as I walked around the property. They were always a
bit shy and would stay a few feet behind me, giggling.
Ancillary
attempts, outside the main development of the com- munity, were also made to
contact UFOs and “space beings.”
In 1969,
Findhorn attracted six hundred visitors ... all of them from our own planet.
David Spangler
and his female partner arrived in the early 1970s to live at Findhorn for three
years, as the last of the “found- ing figures” there, lecturing and giving
channeled guidance. Their arrival brought the community population into double digits, grow- ing to forty-five by the end of the
year.
In those early
days, until around
1972,
Peter would stride around
finding fault with everyone. There was nothing but endless work, from early in the morning
un- til late at night.... Young freaks escaping burnt-out lives in London were
verbally thrashed by Peter for the slightest de- viation from the rigid order
and structure of the community (Hawken, 1976).
In 1973, the
sixty-ish Peter’s heart opened ... to a young, Swedish woman living in the
community, with the ensuing reac- tion from Eileen having the effect of
throwing Findhorn into a pe- riod of uncertainty. Though the potential
extramarital relationship was never consummated, Peter and Eileen grew farther
apart as the years passed. The former eventually left the community in 1979.
One female
member of the populace described the mid-’70s in the Findhorn Community this
way:
The energy level was very high, and
a lot of music came out of that time There was this universal
energy of love, and
all of a sudden it could hit you
with somebody else’s partner. Because there was an openness towards anything
that God sends in one’s direction, some people would then dive
into
these relationships, and would find
themselves in a tangle with no clear way of handling the complications.
It was like an
epidemic.... It really rocked the commu- nity (Findhorn, 1980).
In spite of—or
perhaps because of—such “love in the
time of cabbages,” by 1980 over three hundred people had been drawn to the
Findhorn Caravan Park.
Or the rocking
“Findstock,” if you prefer.
Through all of
that, Eileen’s guidance slowly disclosed the long-term plans for the community:
I want you to see this center of
light [i.e., Findhorn] as an ever-growing cell of light. It started as a family
group; it is now a community; it will grow into a village, then a town and
finally into a vast city of light (Caddy, 1976).
Nor was the
scope of that undertaking lost on the early foun- ders, or on those who have
come since them:
In one form or another there
has been a deep awareness that what was being worked out [at Findhorn] was of
supreme importance to the whole world.
This could of course
be just an inflated ego on the part of those at Findhorn—or it could be a most
daring and glorious act of faith, that God had a vast plan for mankind which,
if known and followed, could lead to a new age, and that Find- horn was a key
point in that plan (Caddy, 1976).
The Findhorn Community plays a
significant part in a revo- lution that is gently changing the world.... This
revolution does not “do” anything. It does not normally make headlines in any
of the news media, but it creates the conditions in which [love,
spirituality, cooperation and harmony] can flour-
ish among human beings. Perhaps it is responsible for the rather extraordinary
changes that, at the close of the ’80s, have
laid the basis for the end of the Cold War and the trans- formation of Eastern Europe. But
it has much more still to do
(Riddell, 1990).
*
* *
The present
Findhorn community includes an independent Steiner (i.e., “Waldorf”) school, providing additional alternative education
for the children there. Students are
encouraged to learn at their own rate, in a close relationship to a teacher who
continues with a class from one year to the next. By itself, that is
undoubtedly a wonderful way to structure an educational program. The “Intimi-
dation of the Waldorf Kind” article by Arno Frank (2000),
however, raises serious concerns about those schools in general, as does the
information presented at www.waldorfcritics.org:
Parents should be told that the
science and history curricu- lum will be based on Steiner’s reading of the “akashic re- cord,” according to which
the “ancients” had clairvoyant powers which Anthroposophic initiation may help
students attain some day. They should be told that loyal Steiner fol- lowers
believe humans once lived on the lost continent of At- lantis. They should be told that teachers
study a medieval
scheme in which race, blood, and the
“four temperaments” will help them understand their students’ development (PLANS, 2004).
Steiner’s first Atlantean sub-race
was named the
Rmoahals.
When a Rmoahals man pronounced a
word, this word devel- oped a power similar to that of the object it
designated. Be- cause of this, words at that time were curative; they could
advance the growth of plants, tame the rage of animals, and perform other
similar functions (Steiner, 1959).
Rudolf Steiner
himself (1861 – 1925), in his Atlantis
and Le- muria (1963), expounded on the details of our imagined lost his-
tory, crediting the terrestrial atmosphere in the time of Atlantis as being
much more dense at that time, than it is at present.
The above-mentioned density of air
is as certain for occult experience as any fact of today given by the senses
can be.
Equally certain
however is the fact, perhaps even more inexplicable for contemporary physics
and chemistry, that at that time the water
on the whole Earth was much thinner than
today....
[I]n the
Lemurian and even in the Atlantean period, stones and metals were much softer
than later (Steiner, 1959).
We need not raise the question now
as to whether such a condition of density is compatible with the opinion held
by modern science, for science and logical thought can ... never say the final
word as to what is possible (Steiner, 1963).
Having thus
disposed of physics in his pursuit of a denser, thinner and softer metaphysics,
Steiner (1963) continued:
[T]he human body had been provided
with an eye that now no longer exists, but we have a reminder of this erstwhile
condition in the myth of the One-Eyed Cyclops.
Nor was that
the only discrepancy to be found between our known world and the bodies of
yore:
The forms of [the first] animals
would, in the present day, strike us as fabulous monsters, for their bodies
(and this must be carefully kept in mind) were of the nature of air....
Another group
of physical beings had bodies which con- sisted of air-ether, light-ether and
water, and these were plant-like beings....
“If I could talk to the plantimals................................. ” Or be
one:
[M]an lived
as a plant being in the Sun itself (Steiner, 1959).
Steiner further
claimed of Lemurian women:
Everything was animated for them and showed itself
to them in soul powers and apparitions. That which impelled them
to their reaction were “inner
voices,” or what plants, ani- mals, stones, wind and clouds, the whispering of
the trees, and so on, told them....
If with his
consciousness man could raise himself into [the] supersensible world, he would
be able to greet the “ant or bee spirit” there in full consciousness as his
sister being. The seer can actually do
this.
Rudolf himself
was the head of the German branch of the The- osophical Society until being expelled from that in 1913 for “illegal”
(according to the rules of the
Society) activities. From that split, he founded his own Anthroposophical
Society, beginning with fifty- five ex-members of the TS, from which the Waldorf phenomenon in general has grown.
Steiner had encountered Theosophy
in the 1880s through the writings of Sinnett and Blavatsky,
most of which he later re- jected—with the exception of The Secret Doctrine, which he regarded as the most remarkable
esoteric text (apart from his own)
published in modern times....
The audiences
for [Steiner’s theosophical lectures] were at first very small. Happily,
Steiner showed no concern, claiming that the audience was swelled by invisible
spiritual beings and the dead, eager for the occult knowledge they could not,
apparently, acquire in the Other World (Washing-
ton, 1995).
The Secret Doctrine was
Madame Blavatsky’s anti-Darwinian explanation of the origins of life on Earth,
via a number (seven) of “root races” purportedly descended from spiritual
beings from the moon. The book was presented as an explication of stanzas from
the little-known Book of Dzyan—itself
written in the unknown-to- any-linguist language of Senzar.
Steiner, meanwhile, taught the existence of a Lord
of the Dark Face, an evil entity by the name of Ahriman—the spirit of
materi- alism. That disruptive being, he felt, “had been making trouble in the
world since 1879 when the Archangel Michael took over the divine guidance of
mankind and began a cosmic process of enlight- enment” (Washington, 1995).
Steiner (1947)
further described the progressing student’s “as- cent into the higher worlds”
as involving a meeting with the “Guardian of the Threshold”:
[T]he Guardian of the Threshold is
an (astral) figure, reveal- ing itself to the student’s awakened higher
sight.... It is a lower magical process to make the Guardian of the Thresh- old
physically visible also. That was attained by producing a cloud of fine substance, a kind of frankincense resulting from a particular mixture of a number of substances. The devel-
oped power of the magician is then able to mould the frank- incense into shape,
animating it with the still unredeemed karma of the individual....
What is here
indicated in narrative form must not be understood in the sense of an allegory,
but as an experience of the highest possible reality befalling the esoteric
student.
On a more personal level,
Rudolf averred:
The clairvoyant ... can describe, for
every mode of thought and for every law of nature, a form which expresses them.
A revengeful thought, for example, assumes an arrow-like, pronged form, while a
kindly thought is often formed like an opening
flower, and so on. Clear-cut, significant thoughts
are regular and symmetrical in form, while confused thoughts have wavy
outlines.
And speaking of “wavy outlines”:
Anthroposophical medicine seems to
be based partly on magical theories of correspondence—for example cholera is a
punishment for insufficient self-confidence and the pox for lack of affection.
Today the Anthroposophists run clinics, a mental hospital, and a factory for
medicines which has mar- keted a cancer cure (Webb, 1976).
As to Steiner’s overall caliber of thought, then,
Storr (1996) summarizes:
His belief system is so eccentric,
so unsupported by evidence, so manifestly bizarre, that rational skeptics are
bound to consider it delusional....
[H]is so-called
thinking, his supposed power of super- sensible perception, led to
a vision of the world, the universe, and of cosmic history which is
entirely unsupported by any evidence, which is at odds with practically
everything which modern physics and astronomy have revealed, and which is more
like science fiction than anything else.
In a somewhat gentler
vein, Robert Carroll
(2004d) concluded:
There is no question that Steiner
made contributions in many fields,
but as a philosopher, scientist, and artist he rarely rises above mediocrity
and is singularly unoriginal.
Ken
Wilber (2000b), however, expressed his own, more posi-
tive evaluation of poor Rudolf, in this way:
[Steiner] was an extraordinary
pioneer ... and one of the most
comprehensive psychological and philosophical vision- aries of his time.
Indeed, Steiner’s
credulous followers similarly believe him to have been “a genius in twelve
fields” (McDermott, 1984).
To be fair,
Rudolf’s grounded philosophizing, as presented in the first half of McDermott’s
very selectively chosen (“veneer of academia,” etc.) Essential Steiner, is much more coherent than are his farther
flights of fancy. (McDermott himself was president of the California Institute
of Integral Studies [www.ciis.edu] for many years. For the catty relationship
between himself and the allegedly “evil, hated” kw, see Wilber [2001].)
Still, even
given that limited coherence, one cannot help but notice that Wilber, in Chart
4B of his (2000b) Integral Psychology, presents a mapping of Steiner’s nine levels of
reality to the “cor- relative basic structures” of psychology in his own
Four-Quadrant “Theory of Everything.” (That same book is intended
as a “textbook of transpersonal psychology.” Its mapped levels
include astral bod- ies and the like.) Yet, the perception of auras, if real,
would come via the same clairvoyant faculties and subtle bodies as would be
used to read the akashic records. Did
Steiner then see auras clearly, but hallucinate his purported akashic readings? Or was he equally
imagining both? Either way, how does Wilber justify map- ping Steiner’s levels
of reality to his own theories, while ignoring the remainder of what Steiner
devoutly claims to have experienced through the same purported means?
Regardless,
Velikovsky would surely be proud. For, Wilber’s endorsement of Steiner means
either that he has read so little of Rudolf’s work that he is unaware of the
“farther reaches” of it ... or that he is aware of those
fantasies-presented-as-fact, but still con- siders the man to be an insightful
“visionary” and “extraordinary pioneer” in (clairvoyance-based) psychology and
philosophy.
Given Wilber’s
history with Da’s coronas and shabd yoga, those
two options seem equally plausible. (Wilber has evidently hardly read into the
latter yoga at all, yet still presents himself as an expert, fit to determine
who the top yogis of that path are [see Lane, 1996].)
And note again
how kw’s complimentary appraisal of Steiner is, as usual, offered as no mere
opinion, but is rather given as if it were an indisputable fact—“Thus spake the
Oracle of Boulder.” In reality, however, it is emphatically No Such Thing,
especially with regard to Steiner’s philosophy.
If you’re going
to be an oracle, it behooves you to get it
right.
* * *
The continual buzz of activity
throughout a community such as Findhorn could, of course, easily detract from
one’s meditations. Not one to be thus distracted, Eileen Caddy sought guidance
for herself as to where to find a small, quiet place, away from the crowded
living conditions.
[S]he asked within and the voice, in
a joyous piece of guid- ance, replied: “Why don’t you go down to the public
toilets? You will find perfect peace there.”
The little toilet block referred to has been
preserved and is now a herbal
apothecary and wholefood café (Riddell, 1990).
If such preservation
seems to be excessively reverential, note that traditional Tibetan medicine
goes even further, at times con- taining small amounts of lama (not llama) ...
um....
[Seventeenth-century Austrian Jesuit
cleric Johann] Grue- ber was particularly repulsed by the custom of the laity’s
eat- ing “curative pills” containing the Dalai Lama’s excrement (Schell,
2001).
Or, in the vernacular: “holy
shit.”
A hundred years ago, rumors that the
feces of the Dalai Lama—the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists—had bene-
ficial properties prompted the UK’s Surgeon General to ana- lyze them in the
interests of science. They contained nothing remarkable, he concluded. Just as
well: According to a spokesperson at the UK-based Tibet Foundation, “These days you can’t
even buy the Dalai Lama’s
used clothes, never mind his excrement” (Toscani, 2000).
And they call that progress!
When the doctor [treating David
Bohm—the Dalai Lama’s “physics teacher”—for “thick
blood” in Switzerland] indicated that he would send to Dharamsala for medication, the
Dalai Lama insisted that the treatment should begin immediately. He took
Precious Tablets, wrapped in silk, from a pouch in his room and instructed Saral [Bohm’s wife] on how they
should be prepared. Bohm found their
taste revolting (Peat, 1997).
“Nityananda the Poo,” however, would surely have approved— and perhaps even grabbed a
mouthful.
Along those
same lines, in later years Findhorn experienced a sewage backup, flooding the toilets
and bathtubs of the Caddys’ former hotel in Cluny Hills, now owned and operated
by the Find- horn Foundation as a community residence. Residents spent two
weeks attempting to find the relevant sewage lines—including, in desperation, searching via the use of divining
rods and pendulums. That
ardent pursuit, however, failed to disclose the source of the obstruction.
It became increasingly clear that
the sewer blockage was a symbolic way of showing us something about our life.
A channeling
was received. It told us we had become too concerned with outer forms,
neglecting our spiritual connec- tion. The sewage began to flood the garden.
[Hence, “love in the time of cabbages and
cholera.”] We organized a meeting and agreed that each member would make a
personal com- mitment to their own spiritual development. In the afternoon
we shared what we had individually decided.
At 4 p.m., when the
meeting ended, the sewers were unblocked. They had unblocked themselves!
(Riddell, 1990).
Verily, “the
Lord doth work in mysterious ways,” etc. As do
His “avatars”:
To see if he had become proud after
becoming a big guru, Ramakrishna went to slum areas and washed the toilets with his hair (Satchidananda, in
[Mandelkorn, 1978]).
* * *
As time went on, it became ever clearer
to Eileen and Peter that they were ... the spearhead of a new age. They were
pio- neering a new way of living which would spread throughout the world and
give new hope for the future. People would come from every land to learn this new way and then go back
to live it out wherever they might be....
Gradually the
greatness of the task they had under- taken became clearer
to Peter and Eileen and those who
were with them. Findhorn
was nothing less than the growing
tip of humanity (Caddy, 1976).
To keep one’s
perspective in the midst of such pioneering, “growing tip of humanity”
excitement, however, is no easy task ... as every other community which has
ever harbored a similarly grandiose mission could testify.
W. Brugh Joy,
author of Joy’s Way, was then invited
to give a talk at Findhorn in 1980, about what he “sensed was ahead for the
community as a whole,” to a group of participants preparing to en- ter communal
life there. Not surprisingly, the urge to address those unspoken issues proved too strong to resist:
I talked about the consequences of
feeling “special” and how doing battle against the “evils of the world” not
only creates the “enemy,” but is actually a projection of the darker as- pects
of the community onto the world screen. Needless to say, the talk was not
popular and I was fast falling into the “unwelcome guest” category....
Despite
assertions by most partisans of the New Age that they are promoting
such virtues as selfless service
to the world, New Age beliefs
in the specialness and innocence of the New Age are, in my opinion, regressive
... toward the in- fantile, if not the fetal. Such ideation tends to be self-
centered (Joy, 1990).
Some days
later, the “community poet” responded, onstage, af- ter some skits and singing,
to Joy’s earlier talk.
In venomous poetry, powerful and
afire with wrathful right- eousness, he unleashed the dark feelings and
destructive forces of the community. The objects of his rage were the Americans
in general and myself in particular. We were por- trayed in terms that would
make fecal material seem sunny by comparison. His attack centered around money and
power
... the dark side of any endeavor
that wears the mask of great good and
service. The only thing explicitly missing was sex, except he covered that by
using the words “fuck” and “fucking” with an extraordinary frequency (Joy, 1990).
And this was scarcely odd, because....
Of course, such
an isolated outburst in no way invalidates the overall good done within and by the community. That is so particu-
larly since the general response to
Joy’s speech and the poet’s counter-attack, at least in public, seems to have
been fairly ma- ture. That is, unlike what we might have expected to see from some of the “Rude Boys”
in this world,
Joy was certainly not run off the
property for his comments. Nor was he stripped naked
or called a “bottom feeder”
by the respected leaders of the community. By contrast, were such criticisms as
Joy’s directed toward the divine guru-figure
or holy ashram
of the average disciple, the latter would more often than not consider them to
be violently blasphemous.
In a way,
though, one could still actually be surprised, overall, by that temperate
response. For, considering the grandiose per- spective from which the community
was founded, coupled with Pe- ter Caddy’s authoritarian control during the first decade
of its exis- tence, things could have turned out much worse. As it
currently stands, however, Findhorn
welcomes more than 14,000 guests
each year for temporary work retreats or to one of several hundred adult classes taught year-round by New Age
personages such as the “spiritual healer” Caroline Myss. It also exists as part
of a global network of sustainable “Ecovillages.”
Apparently,
then, not every foray into spiritually-based com- munity living need end in
disaster. Undoubtedly, though, such a diverse group of “believers” as exist in
Findhorn would have far less
potential for messing up a community than if they were all following the same
“sage,” i.e., if they all shared and reinforced the same “madness” in each
other. After all, a mixed group of people, even if they were each totally
conforming to the tenets and ex- pected behaviors of their respective paths,
would still effectively create a diverse population of ideas and perspectives.
A more heterogeneous group of people living together
in a community I could not
have imagined (Hawken, 1976).
And, as in
agriculture, such a varied population is less likely to be devastatingly affected by any specific pathology than is a
ho- mogeneous one.
The Findhorn
community, further, is a relatively “feel-good, New Age” one. It has thus never
placed any primary emphasis on destroying the ego as a means to
God-realization. Consequently, it has not sanctioned that easy outlet for
sadistic behavior toward others, as if it were “for their own good” as a cover for simply exact- ing respect and obedience
from them, to the degree which one finds
in the typical ashram.
Probably of
equal or greater importance, though, was the fad- ing-out of the Caddys’
influence as the community grew. That was done, surprisingly, in response
to Eileen’s own received “guidance,” in one of the most generous
sharings of power that one will ever find in a community, whether spiritual or
otherwise.
It will also
have helped that Findhorn has never been a mo- nastic environment. For, that
freedom itself removes a large part of
the potential for suppression, repression/projection, scandals and cover-ups.
There is also a
relative absence of both penalties for
leaving and of a not merely grandiose but spiritually “liberating” benefit
to oneself for staying. That is, unlike most of the other communities we have
met herein, Findhorn seems to have placed “saving the world”—via the growth of
the community into a town, a village, and
then a “vast city of light”—ahead of “saving oneself.” And one can walk away
from the former when the going gets tough, much more easily than one
could turn one’s back on the
latter, for having far less of a
personal stake in it. After all, throwing up one’s hands and allowing the world
to go to hell in a handbasket is one thing; throwing away one’s “only chance
for enlightenment in this life- time,” through disobedience or abandonment of a
spiritual path, is quite another.
All of the
above “missing” elements in Findhorn are generally absolutely central to any “authentic, spiritually transformative”
ashram, as a closed society where “really serious” disciples will remain for
the rest of their lives. With stunning irony, then, it is very probably the lack of all of those things in Findhorn
which have made it into an (according
to present indications) “safe” envi- ronment.
(But, see also Stephen Castro’s
[1996] Hypocrisy and Dis- sent Within the Findhorn Foundation,
for further information in that regard.)
The now relatively democratic management of the community
—with feedback and real “checks and balances” to keep the
rulers accountable to those they rule over—will also have greatly helped.
Of course, even there:
We have also heard from people who
had gone to the com- munity in response to something they had read or heard, only to discover that its reality was not
what they had ex- pected. Most of these reports
indicated a disappointment
that, in the minds of these people,
Findhorn was not living up to the
beautiful ideals which it proclaimed....
[One] young man
kept alternating between staying in London and living at Findhorn. Finally,
despairing of his ability to adapt to Findhorn, he told us that emotionally it
was a worse jungle than London (Findhorn, 1980).
In any case, one cannot help but wonder
what might have hap-
pened had the already geriatric Peter
Caddy had his way with that
Swedish girl three decades ago. Or, had he received explicit inner guidance
himself—thus qualifying as a guru-figure on top of his existing authoritarian tendencies, and being in
a position to inform others of “God’s will,” particularly as it may have
related to the young blond lady. Indeed, in that scenario, there might now be
nothing left to mark the spot where Findhorn once stood, nor even a community
poet to commemorate the occasion in ribald verse.
Verse, that is, such as the
following:
There once was a Scotsman
named Caddy A well-nigh
impassioned brute laddie
He spied a young Swede Said, “She’s got what I need”
Now he’s nine months from being a daddy
CHAPTER XXVI
...
TO A NUNNERY
(PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA)
Nearly everyone is familiar with those
three little monkey- figures that depict the maxim, “See no evil, hear no evil,
speak no evil.” I emphasize the positive approach: “See that which is good,
hear that which is good, speak that which is good.” And smell, taste, and feel
that which is good; think that which is good; love that which is good. Be
enthroned in the castle of goodness, and your memories
will be like beauti- ful
flowers in a garden of noble dreams (Yogananda, 1986).
For all future time, Paramahansa
Yogananda ... will be re- garded as one of the very greatest of India’s
ambassadors of the Higher Culture
to the New World (W. Y. Evans-Wentz, in [SRF, 1976]).
PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA WAS the first yoga master from India to
spend the greater part of his life in North America.
Born in
northeast India near the Himalayan border in 1893, Yogananda began practicing kriya yoga in his early years, and met
his guru, Sri Yukteswar, at age seventeen.
227
Following a
prophetic vision, and at the direction of Yuktes- war, Yogananda accepted an
invitation to speak at the Congress of Religious Liberals in Boston, in the
autumn of 1920. He remained in America following that successful debut,
establishing Self- Realization Fellowship (SRF)
and its headquarters, now named the “Mother Center,” in an abandoned
former hotel atop Mount Wash- ington in Los Angeles, in 1925. As a “Church of
all Religions,” SRF attempts to embrace the “underlying truth of all
religions,” with particular emphasis on yoga/Hinduism and Christianity. Member-
ship numbers are classified, but reasonable guesses range from 25,000 to
100,000 currently active members.
The enterprising young yogi spent the years from 1925 to 1936 lecturing to capacity crowds in halls
throughout America, spread- ing knowledge of the “holy science” of kriya yoga.
As far as the channels through
which one may receive his vari-
ant of that particular set of techniques of meditation, Yogananda explained in
his (1998) Autobiography:
The actual technique should be
learned from an authorized Kriyaban (kriya yogi) of Self-Realization Fellowship
(Yogoda Satsanga Society of India).
Earlier
versions of the same book, however, within the three editions published while
Yogananda was still alive, placed far less restrictions on who may give that initiation:
The actual technique [of kriya yoga]
must be learned from a Kriyaban or kriya yogi (Yogananda,
1946).
More recently,
SRF (in Rawlinson, 1997) stated their position regarding the importance of
their particular line of gurus in effect- ing the spiritual progress of the
disciple:
Some take kriya yoga and become
fully satisfied and forget about the link of masters—they will never reach God.
The reader may
then ponder for him- or herself as to what possible reasons any organization
could have for thus restricting, to
itself, the dissemination of the techniques of its founder, after the latter’s
death, when no such restriction was put in place during his life. SRF’s position, of
course, is that every change to Yogananda’s writings since his passing
has been made on the basis
of instructions given by him while
he was still alive, and done sim- ply to “clarify and rephrase” the text. For
my own part, I do not find that claim
at all convincing. Indeed, the posthumously ham- handed evisceration of his Whispers From Eternity poetry alone (see
Dakota, 1998)—being subjected to brutal and
unnecessary ed- iting which no poetic soul could ever countenance—would cast it
in doubt.
Regardless, the
kriya yoga technique itself is actually not nearly as “top secret” as SRF
presents it as being. Rather, both of the preliminary techniques leading up to
kriya proper are widely known in India. Of those, the “Om” technique is
essentially just an internally chanted mantra, while the “Hong-Sau”
technique/man- tra is given in Chapter 7 of Radha’s (1978)
Kundalini Yoga for the West. (Radha
herself was a disciple of Satchidananda’s guru, Swa- mi Sivananda, and operated
an ashram in that lineage in British Columbia, Canada.) Much of the first stage
of the kriya technique itself further exists in Chapter 9 of the same book. Yogananda’s preliminary “Energization
Exercises,” too, are very similar to ones given later by Brennan (1987).
Ironically, in
spite of their evidently opposite attitudes toward the “secrecy” of those
techniques, Sivananda’s ashram and SRF have long been friendly with each other.
Swami Sivananda
himself (1887 – 1963), in addition to found- ing the Divine Life Society, wrote
over three hundred books. That is
hardly surprising, given his exalted spiritual state:
I have seen God myself. I have
negated name and form, and what remains is Existence-Knowledge-Bliss and
nothing else. I behold God
everywhere. There is no veil. I am one. There is no duality. I rest in my own
self. My bliss is beyond description. The World of dream is gone. I alone exist
(Siva- nanda, 1958).
People consider [Sivananda] to be a
Shiva avatar, incarna- tion (Gyan, 1980).
Swamiji was a phenomenon. He was
described as a “symbol of holiness,” a “walking, talking God on Earth”
(Ananthana- rayanan, 1970).
Of course, no
“walking, talking God” would grace this planet without promulgating his own
skewed set of unsubstantiated be- liefs:
Swami Sivananda has said that every
woman whom a man lures into his bed must in some lifetime become his lawful
wife (Radha, 1992).
The late Swami Sivananda of
[Rishikesh], to my mind the most grotesque product of the Hindu Renaissance,
advised people to write their “spiritual diaries”; and in oral instruc- tions,
he told Indian and Western disciples to write down how often they masturbated. [O]r, as one male disciple told
me, “make a list of number of times
when you use hand for pleasure, and check it like double book keeping against
number of times when you renounced use of hand” (Bharati, 1976).
And they say accountants don’t know how to have fun! Elsewhere in the same book, Swami Bharati—the highly opin-
ionated monk of the Ramakrishna Order whom we have met ear-
lier in some of his kinder moments—categorized Sivananda
as a “pseudo-mystic.................................... fat and smiling.” (Of the Maharishi,
by contrast,
Bharati stated: “I have no reason
to doubt that he is a genuine mystic.... Were it not for the
additional claims that Mahesh Yogi and his disciples make for their brand of mini-yoga [regarding ‘world peace,’ etc.], their product would be just as good as any other
yoga discipline well done.” So, you see, no one really knows
what [if any] is valid and
what isn’t, even though they all pretend to know.)
Further venting
his own instructive anger and anguish solely for the compassionate benefit of
others, Bharati (1976) offered a comparable opinion of Vivekananda:
The “four kinds of yoga” notion goes
back, entirely, and with- out any
mitigating circumstances, to Swami Vivekananda’s four dangerous little booklets
entitled Raja-yoga, Karma- yoga,
Jnana-yoga, and Bhakti-yoga. [Those
titles and terms refer to “royal,” “service,” “wisdom” and “devotional” yoga,
respectively.] These are incredibly naïve, incredibly short ex- cerpts from
Indian literature in translations, rehashed in his talks in America and
elsewhere....
I am certain that Vivekananda has done more harm
than good to the seekers
of mystical knowledge Vivekan-
anda’s concept of raja yoga............................... is dysfunctional.
Bharati’s own
contributions to the understanding of mysti- cism, however, themselves tended
toward the insignificant side. Whatever mysticism may be—from psychosis to the
valid percep- tion of higher levels of reality than the physical—there is, in
my opinion, no measurable chance of it fitting into Bharati’s view of things. Even
his insistence that the mystical “zero-experience,” of the “oneness” of the
individual and cosmic soul, must be only tem- porary and incapacitating, is
relatively belied by Wilber’s claim to have experienced the One Taste state
continuously for half a dec- ade.
Interestingly,
Bharati (1974) regarded Yogananda as a “pho-
ny,” lumping him in with T. Lobsang Rampa and the sorcerer Car- los Castaneda. He simultaneously, though,
took Chögyam Trungpa as having taught “authentic
Tibetan Buddhism,” presumably even in the midst of that guru’s penchant for
“stripping the disciples.” I do not claim to know how to find sense in that
position. But then, unlike Bharati and his admired, soporific friend, Herbert
V. Guen- ther, I am not a scholar. And indeed, to devote one’s life to becom-
ing an expert in the details of a pile of sanctioned baloney, then trashing
anyone who doesn’t buy into the same brand of foolish- ness, strikes me as
being one of the most absurd ways in which to waste a life.
At any rate, Paramahansa Yogananda—whether phony or not
—slowly accumulated a core of close
disciples as the years passed, and thus began a monastic order in his own Swami
lineage. One such early “direct disciple,” Faye Wright, began following the
yogi in the early 1930s, entering the ashrams in her late teens. Now known as
Daya Mata, she figures significantly in contemporary SRF culture, as the
current lifetime president of Self-Realization Fellowship.
Retiring from
his cross-country lecture tours, Yogananda spent
much of the 1940s in seclusion in his Encinitas hermitage— adjacent to the
famed “Swami’s Point” surfing beach there. In that environment, he wrote his Autobiography of a Yogi, a perennial
“sleeper” best-seller among books on spirituality, generally consid- ered to be
among the “Top 100” spiritual books of the twentieth century.
[The Autobiography is]
widely regarded as a classic introduc-
tion to yoga and Eastern thought (Ram Dass, 1990).
Few books in spiritual literature
compare to Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography
of a Yogi. It is one of those rare works that in a single reading can
transform the reader’s en- tire outlook on life. Since its initial printing in
1946, Yoga- nanda’s Autobiography has
continued to enthrall seekers with its fascinating tales of miracles, saints
and astral heav- ens (Lane, 1995).
Autobiography of a Yogi is regarded as an Upanishad of
the new age We in India have watched with wonder and fasci-
nation the phenomenal spread of the
popularity of this book about India’s saints
and philosophy. We have felt great satis- faction and pride that the
immortal nectar of India’s Sana- tan Dharma,
the eternal laws of truth, has been stored in the
golden chalice of Autobiography of a Yogi
(in Ghosh, 1980).
No book so polarized the West about
India and its culture as this one. For those who liked it, their passion went
beyond words. For those who found it an incredible mishmash, the high opinions
they had been harboring about Indian thought suddenly seemed to have become
wobbly (Arya, 2004).
Interestingly,
although Yogananda’s writings merit only a sin- gle quotation in Wilber’s (1983) life’s work, both Adi Da (1995) and Andrew
Cohen were much influenced by the Autobiography
early in their spiritual careers.
Indeed, Cohen obviously derived the title of his (1992) Autobiography of an Awakening from Yogananda’s earlier life story.
For what it’s worth.
The Autobiography contains numerous claims
of miraculous healings, levitation, bilocation and raising of the dead by
various members in the SRF line of gurus, and others of Yogananda’s ac- quaintance.
With less of an
eye toward the probability of such miracles oc- curring, however, the Swiss
psychologist Carl Jung—who himself spent time in India—had praised the study of yoga in general (as distinct
from its practical application, which he explicitly discour- aged):
Quite apart from the charm of the new and the
fascination of the half-understood, there is good cause for yoga to have
many adherents. It offers the
possibility of controllable ex- perience and thus satisfies the scientific need for “facts”;
and, besides this, by reason of its breadth
and depth, its venerable
age, its doctrine and method, which include every phase of life, it promises
undreamed-of possibilities (in Yogananda, 1946).
The phrase
“undreamed-of possibilities” has since been adopt- ed by SRF as the title of an
introductory booklet distributed in their churches and elsewhere. Jung’s
attitude toward Yogananda’s writings in particular, however, was far less of a
marketing de- partment’s dream:
Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi ... pro- voked
Jung’s sarcasm because its cream puff idealism con- tained not a single
practical “antidote to disastrous popula- tion explosion and traffic jams and
the threat of starvation, [a book] so
rich in vitamins that albumen, carbohydrates,
and such like banalities become superogatory.... Happy In- dia!” (Paine,
1998).
Jung, though, is an interesting study himself:
The
brilliant thinker Carl Jung’s opportunistic support of the Nazis ... is amply documented. In 1933
he became president of the New German Society of Psychotherapy. Soon thereaf-
ter, he wrote the following vicious nonsense (seldom men- tioned by his
admirers nowadays):
The
Jews have this similarity common
with women: as the physically
weaker one they must aim at the gaps in the opponent’s defenses ... the Arian [sic] unconscious has a higher potential
than the Jewish (Askenasy, 1978).
In any case,
the Autobiography itself is dedicated
to the “American saint” and prodigious horticulturalist Luther Burbank (1849 –
1926). Yogananda began visiting Burbank in 1924, and the latter in return
endorsed Paramahansa’s ideas on education. (The Burbank potato is named after
Luther; Burbank, California, how- ever, is not.) Interestingly, Burbank’s
mother had gone to school with the girl (Mary Sawyer) upon whose experiences
the “Mary Had a Little Lamb” poem is based.
Yogananda (1946; italics
added) expressed his positive feelings toward Luther as follows:
[Burbank’s] heart was fathomlessly
deep, long acquainted with humility,
patience, sacrifice The modesty with which
he wore his scientific fame
repeatedly reminded me of the trees that bend low with the burden of ripening
fruits; it is the barren tree that lifts its head high in an empty boast.
Given that
glowing evaluation, however, descriptions of Bur- bank’s character which go
contrary to what one might expect from a “humble, modest saint” become very
relevant. Thus:
Conflicting with the independence
conferred by his self- esteem was his love of approval by others. Though he
would do nothing dishonest to earn such approval (for that would have brought
self-condemnation), he eagerly accepted it as
no more than his due. “There are striking instances,” says [fellow
horticulturalist and writer George] Shull, “in which the combination of these
two dominant traits produces one instant the most profound modesty and the next
instant al- most blatant self-praise” (Dreyer, 1975).
Indeed, by
1908, Burbank had come to the immodest conclu- sion that, having surpassed Darwin in the number of plants he had
raised, he was “therefore”
“the greatest authority on plant
life that had ever lived.” This being
the case, he felt that he was better qualified than anyone else to pronounce on
the subject of evolution (Dreyer, 1975).
On that same
subject, however: Burbank believed in the in- heritance of only acquired traits, and was himself
actually regard- ed by the Soviet quack geneticist Lysenko as being one of “the
best biologists.” Notwithstanding that unfortunate association with such an
unscientific protégé of Stalin, Shull (in Dreyer, 1975) of- fered this opinion
of Luther’s claims in general:
[Burbank] had an “exaggeration
coefficient” of about ten ... all his
figures should be divided by this number to get an ap- proximation of the
truth.
Of course, were
anyone to display such characteristics as the above without having been titled as a “modest, humble saint” by a great
yoga master or the like, the same behaviors would be seen as the height
of ego. Indeed, a South African customer—H. E. V. Pick- stone—who visited Burbank in 1904
and spent the day with him, had this to say:
I was disappointed with his
personality ... I found him too much of an egoist ... I do not think he can be
considered a great man from any angle (in Dreyer, 1975).
Regardless,
Burbank not only suggested that he had aided the development of his plants by
sending them “thoughts of love,” but believed himself to be psychic. Indeed, he
“insisted that he pos- sessed the ability to heal by a laying-on of hands,
citing several cases in which he had employed it” (Dreyer, 1975). Those “heal-
ings” were given both to humans and to ailing plants.
Burbank was
again famed for introducing between eight hun- dred and a thousand new plant varieties,
over fifty years of effort, including a “spineless” cactus. Yogananda (1986) gives one account of Luther’s development of
that plant:
“The secret of improved plant
breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love.” Luther Burbank uttered
this wisdom as I walked beside him in
his Santa Rosa garden. We halted near a bed of edible cacti.
“While I was conducting experiments to make ‘spineless’ cacti,” he continued, “I
often talked to the plants to create a vibration of love. ‘You have nothing to fear,’
I would tell them. ‘You don’t need your defensive thorns. I will protect you.’
Gradually the useful plant of the desert emerged in a thornless variety.”
I was charmed
at this miracle.
However, from Dreyer
(1975) we learn:
[Burbank] had assiduously collected
varieties of cactus from Mexico, South Africa and other countries until one
finally turned up that was without the usual spines on the stalks, and another
that lacked spicules on the leaves. These char- acteristics were combined in a
single plant by hybridization after an extensive
series of crossings, and a spineless
cactus
... was produced.
Now and then a spine still occurred
on the
stems............................ Burbank demonstrated the harmlessness of his cac-
tus by softly rubbing his cheek
against the pads. It was a remarkable achievement. But it was no miracle.
* * *
Regarding the discipline given by
Yogananda to his disciples: Dur- ga Mata (1992) relates that at one point in
1948, when Yogananda was in a very high state of samadhi, he talked aloud to what he took to be a vision of the
Divine Mother. The latter would then an- swer
back in Yogananda’s own voice laying out the petty flaws of
the disciples present and absent,
against Yogananda’s entreaties not to punish them.
Of course, if
Yogananda really was conversing with the cosmic Feminine force underlying all
creation, one could hardly find fault with any of that criticism. One cannot,
after all, “second guess” God.
If....
God Herself
spending time criticizing others who weren’t even present, and threatening
punishment on the ones who were there,
for utterly minor exhibitions of selfishness, though, does seem more than a bit odd. It is, indeed, more
consistent with Yoganan- da’s own personality than with what one might expect
from “God”:
[Shelly Trimmer] spent about a year
with [Yogananda] at the SRF headquarters in Los Angeles
but then left. Al-
though he has retained great
affection and respect for Yoga- nanda, he also acknowledges his weaknesses. “He
loved to order women about—after all he was a Hindu.... He had a violent temper
and was a little bit arrogant” (Rawlinson, 1997).
* * *
It is well known that Yogananda took
great delight in the techno- logical innovations of his day, including the
garbage disposal. Less celebrated are his own alleged contributions to the
progress of sci- ence and technology, as per Walters (2002):
I would say that Paramhansa [sic]
Yogananda was a prophet for the New Age. Monasteries? yes, but far more than
that....
In pursuit of universal upliftment
[he] spoke, in private conversation with me, of certain inventions he had inspired,
or in one case discovered among
practices in India and else- where He even said he’d introduced the concept of covers
on toilet seats.
It is not easy
to know how to react to such a claim. Nor is it easy to know where to rank it
in comparison with the scatological inspirations of Eileen Caddy, Bhagawan
Nityananda or the Dalai Lama, for example.
Perhaps it is enough to simply say, “Jai, guru. Jai.”
* * *
Of course, no guru could have worked
for years in Los Angeles without accumulating a few “star” disciples. Famous followers
and acquaintances of Yogananda, then, have included Greta Garbo (who also frequented the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Vedanta
Cen- ter in Hollywood) and the actor Dennis Weaver (Gunsmoke). The latter used to give monthly sermons at the SRF Lake
Shrine tem- ple, located where L.A.’s Sunset Boulevard meets the Pacific Ocean, near Malibu.
A stone
sarcophagus in that same park-like setting contains the only portion of Mahatma
Gandhi’s ashes to exist outside of In- dia. (Yogananda claims in the Autobiography to have initiated Gandhi
into kriya yoga in 1935. There is much reason, however, to question whether the
Mahatma actually practiced that technique on any regular basis afterward.) Of
course, it is actually against Hindu religious practice to keep the ashes of a
departed soul for display, as opposed to scattering them into bodies of water:
“When the ashes are kept on the land, the belief is that the soul remains
caught on Earth and is never released into the ‘afterlife.’” Or, al-
ternatively, to remove any of the ashes of the deceased is regarded as similar
to taking a limb from a live individual (Strelley, 1987).
Be that as it
may, Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson once wrote a song—“Babaji,” from 1977’s Even
in the Quietest Moments album—
inspired by Yogananda’s teachings. In that case, the lyrics were motivated by
the Himalayan guru upon whose behest kriya yoga was given to the world, through
Yogananda for one. Hodgson fur- ther spent time at the northern California
“Ananda” ashram of one of Yogananda’s direct disciples—J. Donald Walters,
a.k.a. Kriya- nanda. His sister Caroline has resided in the same community. In-
deed, Roger met his future wife, Karuna, when the latter was liv- ing in a
teepee in that very ashram.
George
Harrison, although not himself a disciple of Yoganan- da, was interviewed for
SRF’s “Lake Shrine” video, quoting there from
Sri Yukteswar’s (1977)
book, The Holy Science.
(Ravi Shankar was featured
in the same film. Shankar introduced George to Yogananda’s writings in 1966.)
At Harrison’s prompting, images of four of the SRF line of gurus—Babaji, Lahiri
Mahasaya, Sri Yuk- teswar and Yogananda—were included on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pep- per’s album cover collage.
(Jesus was omitted so as to not further aggravate public religious feelings
still raw from Lennon’s “the Beatles are more popular than Jesus Christ”
observation.) Refer- ences to Yogananda in Harrison’s solo work include the
songs “Dear One,” “Life Itself” and
“Fish on the Sand.” Harrison’s family further donated the U.S. proceeds from
the re-release, in early 2002, of his “My Sweet Lord” single, to SRF.
Madonna—yes, that Madonna, again—has likewise spoken
positively of Yogananda’s Autobiography. Pamela
Anderson (2005) herself has swooned
top-heavily over Paramahansa’s (1986) Divine
Romance. And the brilliant comedian/actor Robin Williams—a friend of both
George Harrison and Christopher Reeve, having roomed at Juilliard with the
latter—actually subscribed to at least part of the SRF Lessons series. That, at least, according to a for-
mer-Deadhead monk whom I met during my own otherwise- unpleasant stay in the
SRF ashrams, which will be detailed later on.
Gary “Dream
Weaver” Wright—another friend of Harrison’s— has also been rumored to be an SRF
member.
The King of
Rock and Roll, too, found inspiration in the kriya yoga path:
Elvis loved material by guru
Paramahansa Yogananda, the Hindu founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship (Cloud, 2000).
Following
Yogananda’s passing, Presley—whom we may dub a hillolayavatar, or “incarnation of rock and roll”—actually made
numerous phone calls and trips, over a twelve-year period, to see SRF’s Daya
Mata. (Apparently she reminded him of his deceased mother, as did the
Theosophical Society’s famously unkempt and grotesquely obese Madame
Blavatsky.) Indeed, the Meditation Garden at Graceland—where Elvis came to be
buried—is said to have been inspired by SRF’s Lake Shrine (Mason, 2003). Elvis
ac- tually “took this spiritual inquiry
so seriously that he considered
devoting the
rest of his life to it by becoming a monk” (Hajdu, 2003).
Ironically, as
we have seen, had Presley taken such a step, it needn’t have negatively
impacted his sex life at all.
Elvis was famed
for, among other things, his ownership of a pink 1955 Cadillac. And amazingly,
it has been reported—though also later disputed, in terms of its (possibly
re-painted?) color— that Daya Mata’s normal means of transportation to the SRF
Mother Center atop Mount Washington in Los Angeles is via a fif- teen-minute
commute in a “vintage pink Cadillac.” (That drive is from a nearby
million-dollar “palace in the suburban Himalayas,” at 200 South Canon Avenue in
Sierra Madre. The house itself is said to have been a 1966 gift from the late
billionaire tobacco heir- ess, Doris Duke [Russell,
2001].)
The present
author, however, has no information to suggest that those two are actually the
same car. Indeed, it would perhaps be just as well if it wasn’t the same vehicle. For, the potential
irony of a bunch of nuns driving around in a car full of “good
vibrations” from a back seat on which The King must have had his way with how many nubile girls—literally a
different one every night, in his younger days—is just too delicious to
consider.
* * *
No small amount of any sage’s
“proof” of his divinity invariably comes from his working of purported
miracles, even if he may si- multaneously downplay their importance as mere
“signs and won- ders.” Thus:
[Yogananda] said that he knew how to walk on fire,
and to go without eating indefinitely, but that God did not want him to
perform such feats, for his mission was to teach and bring souls back to God
through kriya yoga and love (Mata, 1992).
“Walking on fire,” however,
is wholly explicable in terms of the
known laws of physics. Indeed, according to scientists, it neither requires nor
benefits from any advanced “mind over matter” men- tal preparation or the like.
In fact, as early as the 1930s—well within Yogananda’s lifetime—the Council for
Psychical Research “issued reports stating that religious faith and
supernatural pow- ers were unrelated to firewalking.” Instead, they ascribed
the suc- cess in that endeavor to the “low thermal conductivity of the burn-
ing wood, and the relatively small amount of time that contact oc-
curs between the hot coals and a participant’s feet” (Nisbet,
2000).
In Fiji, Hawaii, and Japan, a
variation of the stunt is per- formed on lava stone, which also [like hot
coals] has very poor conductivity and
low specific heat, and is similar to the “heat shield” ceramic used on the
outer skin of the space shuttle (Randi, 1995).
One scientific investigation carried
out by Chas R. Darling and reported in Nature,
Sept. 28, 1935, consisted of pressing a thermal junction on to the fire
intermittently so as to imi- tate the period of contact of each foot and the
interval be- tween each step. [A] number of separated [sic] trials showed a rise of 15 – 20 °C in the junction—conclusive
proof that the feet of the performer would not be hot enough for blistering to occur (Edwards,
1994).
For further
explanation, see Carroll (2004c), Nixon (2004), Kjernsmo (1997)
and Willey (2002).
Still, “don’t try it at home.”
Regarding the
inedia which the portly Yogananda claimed for himself, it is interesting to
note that he vouched for a similar tal- ent for the famed Catholic stigmatist
Therese Neumann. Indeed, he even
credited her a comparable supposed basis to his own, in the purported chakric ingestion of subtle energies.
In support of
the yogi’s ostensible first-hand knowledge of Neumann’s genuineness and
metaphysical means of living “by God’s light,” we learn that Therese’s local
German bishop
instigated a surveillance in 1927
that purportedly produced definitive evidence in favor of her claims, but the
observa- tions were only for fifteen days. Therese’s urine was moni- tored
during this time and for the following fortnight. A study of the results ... is as expected for the period of obser-
vation (Nickell, 1998).
However—
the post-observation data [see
Wilson, 1988] were indicative of “a return to normal, suggesting that once
Therese was no longer subject to round-the-clock observation, she went back to normal
food and drink intake.” Magnifying the suspicion
was Therese’s subsequent refusal to
undergo further surveil- lance (Nickell, 1998).
Neumann’s
claimed stigmata fares only marginally better, in spite of Yogananda’s (1946) equal certainty as to its validity:
Therese showed me a little, square,
freshly healed wound on each of her palms. On the back of each hand, she
pointed out a smaller, crescent-shaped wound, freshly healed. Each wound went
straight through the hand. [That must be a mere
assumption on Yogananda’s part, as he would not have physically verified
that the wound
was continuous from front
to back, by passing anything through it.] The sight brought to my mind distinct
recollection of the large square iron nails with crescent-tipped ends, still used in the Orient.
Others less
credulous, however, have given
additional, uncom- plimentary information:
[A] Professor Martini conducted a
surveillance of Therese Neumann and observed that blood would flow from her
wounds only on those occasions when he was persuaded to leave the room, as if
something “needed to be hidden from observation” [i.e., in manually inflicting
superficial wounds on herself]. He added: “It was for the same reason that I
dis- liked her frequent
manipulations behind the raised [bed] cov-
erings”....
[The stigmata
shifted] from round to rectangular over time, presumably as she learned the
true shape of Roman nails (Nickell, 2001).
In another
equally impressive attempt at parapsychology, Yogananda (1946) related his encounter with a “Perfume Saint”
in India, the latter being credited with the power of manifesting scents on
demand:
I was a few feet away from Gandha
Baba; no one else was near enough to contact my body. I extended my hand, which
the yogi did not touch.
“What perfume do you want?”
“Rose.”
“Be it so.”
To my great
surprise, the charming fragrance of rose was wafted strongly from the center of
my palm.
The late
magician Milbourne Christopher (1975), however, of- fered a very simple
explanation for Paramahansa’s reported “mi- raculous” experience:
Yogananda, who did not know how the
feat was accom- plished, erred in saying the yogi did not touch his hand be-
fore the rose fragrance came from it. In this presentation the performer
secretly breaks the proper pellet [of the requested perfume enclosed in wax,
hidden under a fingernail] as soon as a scent is named; the perfume wets the
ball of his thumb. Instructing the spectator to extend his hand, the performer
reaches across to grasp it with his thumb on the palm and his fingers on the back. As he does this,
the performer says, “I want you to
turn your hand palm down. I will not touch it.” The spectator remembers
the words, not the action,
of the performer. The
performer moves several feet away. While standing at a distance, he tells the spectator to turn his hand
palm upward. The scent is not perceptible until the specta- tor’s hand turns
and the fragrance rises upward to his nos- trils....
With a dozen
tiny pellets, an adept showman can con- vince a skeptical investigator that “any”
perfume can be ma- terialized.
Yogananda
himself, though, may not have been an innocent stranger to the means behind
such “parlor tricks.” For, consider the
following demonstration of “yogic powers” on his part:
[Yogananda] interrupted his talk to ask
if there were a doc- tor in the audience. A man stood up and Swamiji asked him
to come on the stage. He requested the doctor, “Take my pulse and tell me what
you feel.” The doctor felt his wrist, looking perplexed at first and then
amazed. “There is no pulse,” he answered. Swamiji then told him to take the
pulse on the other wrist. The doctor’s facial
expression turned from amazement to incredulity. He said,
“Swami Yogananda, this is impossible. Your pulse is pounding at an incredible speed.” He quickly tried the other side again and said, “This
side is normal.” He came down from the stage into the audience shaking his head
and mumbling, “Impossible, impossible” (Charlton, 1990).
And yet, as the
East Indian rationalist Basava Premanand (2005)
has noted:
[The cessation of the pulse at the
wrists] is done by stopping the flow of blood to the hands by keeping a lemon,
or a small ball or a rolled handkerchief in the armpits and pressing. Doctors
do not in the confusion check the heartbeat but check the pulse and confirm that the pulse is stopped.
In the SRF Lessons (Yogananda, 1984), we are
further in- formed of the following metaphysical claim:
In
rare instances ... a person who has lived a very animalistic existence is drawn into the
body of an animal, to learn some lesson. This explains the “thinking dogs” and
“thinking hors- es” which have puzzled scientists who have tested them.
The Lessons were compiled and edited by
Yogananda’s direct disciples, under his oversight. Thus, one cannot
know whether Par- amahansa himself was solely
responsible for the above insight, or whether it should rather be credited to
members of the current Board of Directors, for example (or to Kriyananda, who
also worked on that editing). Either
way, though, the “explanation” of- fered above to scientists—whether puzzled or
otherwise—is radi- cally mistaken.
The most famous of the “thinking horses” of the twentieth cen- tury were Lady Wonder and Clever
Hans.
Learned professors were convinced
that Hans could work out his own
solution to mathematical problems and had a better knowledge of world affairs
than most fourteen-year-old child- ren (Christopher, 1970).
Lady Wonder was
equally feted by the New York World in
1927, as allegedly being able to “read minds, predict
the future and converse in Chinese.” Yet, that did
not stop her from being conclu- sively debunked by Milbourne Christopher in
1956:
As a test, Christopher gave Lady’s
trainer, Mrs. Claudia Fonda, a false
name, “John Banks”. When
Christopher sub-
sequently inquired of Lady, “What is
my name?,” the mare obligingly nudged the levers [of the horse’s large
“typewrit- er”] to spell out B-A-N-K-S....
Mrs. Fonda gave a “slight movement” of her training
rod whenever Lady’s head was at the correct letter (Nickell, 2002).
Further
experimentation by Christopher disclosed that Fonda had herself been
deceptively utilizing the mentalists’ trick of “pen- cil reading”—in visually
following the movements of the free end of a pencil, to discern what number had been written
down by a ques-
tioner. She was then cueing Lady Wonder with that information, thus allowing
the horse to fake “telepathy” well enough to fool the credulous
parapsychologist J. B. Rhine.
Earlier in the
twentieth century, Clever Hans had fared no better when tested by Oskar
Pfungst:
Pfungst’s study revealed that the
horse could give a correct answer only if the questioner knew it. When Pfungst
shield- ed the eyes of the animal, the hoof remained still. It was rea- sonable
to suppose at this point that [Hans’ owner] was cue- ing Hans subconsciously.
Further study ruled out signals by touch or sound.
Pfungst now centered
his observations on the
questioner. He discovered that Hans started stamping when the questioner leaned
forward ever so slightly to see the hoof in action. Hans stopped when the man
relaxed even a frac- tion....
Then Pfungst
played horse himself. He rapped with his right hand as friends posed queries.
Twenty-three out of twenty-five questioners gave the starting and stopping cue
without realizing it. Pfungst’s answers were as baffling to them as the horse’s
had been (Christopher, 1970).
“Not so clever now, eh, Hans?” Nor such a Clever
Parama- hansa. For, while “thinking”
dogs, pigs, goats and geese have all been exhibited over the course of the past
few centuries, ordinary training and conscious
or subconscious cueing can account
for all of their celebrated behaviors. Thus, independent of whether or
not reincarnation exists, there is no rational reason to believe that it has
anything to do with such “thinking.”
Note, further,
how similar cues to those given unconsciously
by the questioners of Clever Hans would have to be present and relevant
in the search for tulkus. For, the
latter are again children who are asked to identify the possessions of their
“previous incar- nation,” from among a set of objects
... where others
in the room
with the child know what the right answer is. A suitably sensitive or crafty
child, even if only a few years old, might well be able to pick up on such
inadvertent cues, just as a relatively dumb horse can. Voilà! an “incarnation,”
who will very quickly have additional “miraculous” events incorporated into the
myth of his “recogni- tion.” And thereby do utterly normal rainbows,
coincidental dreams, and otherwise-irrelevant pails full of forgotten milk be-
come “signs.”
Of course, such
searches are typically initially motivated by a lama’s dream of a particular
house, or of a family with specific characteristics, living in a certain
direction, etc. But even there, “seek and—statistically—ye shall find.” That is
so, even without later “revisionist histories” as to the details of the
original events, to emphasize particular attributes of the dream. For, it is
unavoid- able that elements of the dream which, at the time of dreaming, were
no more important than any others, will assume purported significance when a
promising family is found, which matches some
of the selectively chosen “facts” revealed in the dream, but misses completely
on others—as it invariably will. With equal cer- tainty, those “misses” will
not be mentioned in later recountings of the “recognition” myth.
Seen in that
light, the reported poor behaviors, in sex and vio- lence, of contemporary and
past tulkus and Dalai Lamas become
very understandable. For, those “reincarnated sages” are, after all, very
ordinary people, who were simply placed into extraordinary circumstances from
childhood onward. And even an otherwise- average person could “play holy,” as
they do publicly, if that was all he
had ever been taught how to do. (Cf. Krishnamurti. Yoga- nanda, too, was
trained from earliest childhood to be a “spiritual engine,” destined to bring
others to God.)
* * *
Yogananda (in Kriyananda, 1974) offered numerous
predictions for the future,
prior to his passing in the early 1950s. Included among those were an
anticipated “revolution” in America against govern- mental interference; the
end of England as a world power; and the prophecy that China would “end up
absorbing Japan.” The yogi further foresaw a Third World War, around the 1970s,
to spread communism throughout “much of the free world.” Following that would
be a fourth such war, “toward the last decade” of the twenti- eth century.
That conflict was fated to devastate Europe,
annihi-
late (communist) Russia, and leave America
victorious, ushering in a new age of peace for hundreds of
years.
In addition:
A
terrible [economic] depression is coming, far worse
than the last one!....
In the next
century Boston will have a tropical climate, and the people there will be brown
skinned (in Kriyananda, 1974).
We shall have
to see, of course, what becomes of the Bostonian climate in the future, what
with global warming and all.
In any case,
the booklet in which all of the above wildly wrong predictions were preserved
by Yogananda’s schismatic direct disci- ple Kriyananda is by now,
understandably, long out of print. (The above
are not merely the most-wrong of Paramahansa’s predictions in that book, but are rather a
concise summary of his prognostica- tions. Were there any non-obvious and correct prophecies therein, I would
happily have included them here. There are not.)
* * *
Yogananda himself claimed to have
lived at Stonehenge around 1500 BC in a previous incarnation, and asserted that
Winston Churchill was the reincarnation of Napoleon. (Churchill’s [1874 – 1965]
life, however, overlapped with Aurobindo’s, with the latter, too, again
claiming to be the reincarnation of Monsieur Bona- parte.) Also according to
Yogananda, Hitler was Alexander the Great. In the same vein,
Kriyananda (1977) relates
Paramahansa’s declaration that Benito Mussolini was Marc Anthony; Kaiser
Wil- helm was Julius Caesar; Stalin was Genghis Khan; Charles Lind- bergh was
Abraham Lincoln; and Therese Neumann was Mary Magdalene. (Neumann died in 1962;
Rajneesh’s Vivek, claiming the same
reincarnation, was born before then; etc.)
Among the SRF
gurus, Lahiri Mahasaya was, according to the same source, both King Janaka and
the poet Kabir. Likewise, Ba- baji (as with Aurobindo) was believed to be the
reincarnation of Krishna—with Yogananda himself being the Bhagavad Gita’s Ar-
juna, Krishna’s most beloved disciple. As he himself explained parts of that:
[Rajasi Janakananda—James J. Lynn,
Yogananda’s most advanced male disciple—was] one of the [Bhagavad Gita’s]
twins, the positive one, Nakula. He
was my favorite brother and I loved him more than anyone else. I was also his
Guru then too. Krishna was my guru and Babaji, being Krishna, is still my guru,
Sri Yukteswarji was my guru by proxy for Ba- baji (in Mata, 1992).
Yogananda further
said that he himself would reincarnate in a
few hundred years, “just to sit in back and meditate.”
All of the
gurus in the SRF lineage (i.e., Krishna, Jesus, Ba- baji, Lahiri Mahasaya and
Sri Yukteswar) are additionally be- lieved to be avatars. Yukteswar is also
held to have been the rein- carnation of the stigmatist Saint Francis of
Assisi.
“Sir,” I asked Master [i.e.,
Yogananda] one day at his desert retreat, “are you an avatar?”
With quiet
simplicity he replied, “A work of this impor- tance would have to be started by
such a one” (Kriyananda, 1979).
Indeed,
Yogananda often said of SRF and kriya yoga, “This work is a special
dispensation of God” (Kriyananda, 1979). He fur- ther prophesied that it would
sweep the world “like wildfire” over the coming millennia, to the point where “millions
would come.”
As expected,
there is an asserted connection with Jesus as well:
“Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, and Sri
Yukteswar,” [Yogananda] announced, “were the three wise men who came to visit
the Christ child in the manger” (Kriyananda, 1979).
Others (e.g., Burke, 1994) have suggested
that Yogananda was also previously John the Beloved
(i.e., Jesus’ apostle, John).
Yogananda
himself claimed, on other occasions, to be the rein- carnation of William the
Conqueror. The latter king, being the ille- gitimate son of Robert
I, Duke of Normandy, and a
tanner’s daugh- ter, was also
known as William the Bastard. He was actually re- puted to be able to heal
scrofula (a kind of tuberculosis) with a mere “king’s touch.”
In later years Yogananda revealed to
me why he called me his “giant returned.” Yogananda in a past existence
had been William the
Conqueror.
I experienced
in a vision the Battle of Hastings as King William conquered England. I was
beside him in this battle, and was of such stature I could look him straight in
the eyes while standing beside him as he sat astride his horse. I car- ried a
gigantic battle axe which in effect allowed no harm to come to his person
(Paulsen, 1984).
However: Even a
very small war horse of, say, fourteen hands at the shoulder, with the nearly
six-foot tall William ensconced in its saddle, would dictate a standing “giant”
around an unbelievable eight and a half feet tall,
for their eyes to be at the same level.
Yogananda (1986) continues:
Quite a few people have heard me
mention a previous life in which I lived for many years in England. Experiences
of that life come clearly to my mind. There were certain details about the
Tower of London [a historic fortress, originally a royal palace built by William
the Conqueror after the Battle of Hastings, and today displaying the Crown
Jewels] that I remembered very well, and when I went there in 1935 I saw that
those places were exactly as I had seen them within.
Or, as Kriyananda/Walters (2002) relates
it:
Master had told Daya that she was
one of his daughters when he was William the Conqueror. One couldn’t help feel-
ing that there was a certain regal quality about Daya Mata, as also about
Virginia, her sister, who now bears the name Ananda Mata, and who also was
closely related to Master during that lifetime. I came to believe, though
Master had never told me so, that I was Daya’s youngest brother, Mas- ter’s
son, in that incarnation.
Yogananda further said of
one of Durga Mata’s brothers:
[H]e was with me in a previous life.
If you will recall, when William the Conqueror fell upon landing in England,
one of his men [i.e., the current brother] told William,
“This fall is a bad omen, let us
turn back” (Mata, 1992).
William
himself, however, seems to have exhibited somewhat less than the “omnipresent
divine love” with which Yogananda has since been credited:
When William was in his early
twenties he asked Count Baldwin V of Flanders for his daughter Matilda’s hand
in marriage. [Matilda was a diminutive 4' 2", or half the height of
Paulsen’s alleged gigantic incarnation.] But Matilda was already in love with
an Englishman named Brihtric. She supposedly proclaimed that she would rather
become a nun than the wife of a bastard, which made William so angry that he attacked her in the street as she
left church one day. He slapped her, tore her clothes, threw her to the ground,
and rode off (Royalty, 2003).
William and
Matilda were actually distant cousins, causing
the pope to object to their eventual marriage on grounds of incest.
Indeed, His Holiness went so far as to excommunicate the “happy couple”—and
everyone else in Normandy—for several years; re- lenting only at William’s
promised building of two new abbeys.
In later years,
in search of greater
conquests,
William gathered together a great
army in Normandy, and had many men, and sufficient transport-shipping. The day
that he rode out of the castle to his ships, and had mounted his horse, his
wife came to him, and wanted to speak with him; but when he saw her he struck at her with his heel,
and set his spurs so deep into her breast that she fell down dead; and the earl
rode on to his ships, and went with his ships over to England (Sturlson, 1997).
[H]e was merciless in the
suppression of political opposition. In fact, so merciless was he that he
introduced the act of be- heading to England in 1076 (Silverman,
2003).
To be fair,
however, William B. was said to have been “ob- sessed by guilt over his
treatment of Waltheof [the first Saxon to lose his head, while all around were
keeping theirs] until his own death a decade later” (BBC,
2003). And that, from a man who had a
lot to feel guilty about:
William loved gold too much ... he
had a passion for hunting and protected his game by savage laws which made
beasts more valuable than men (Walker, 1968).
And at other
times, when on the warpath:
Twenty-six unfortunate citizens
[from the town of Alençon] were lined up and their hands and feet were cut off,
partly for vengeance, partly to
terrify the garrison. The savagery was successful. William was rarely driven to
that point of anger again (Walker, 1968).
“Rarely”? How often
is “rarely”?
The chronically
obese bastard himself sadly met with a some- what unsavory end. For, while on
horseback fighting the French at the Battle of Mantes, William’s intestines
were ruptured in his be- ing thrown violently against the iron pommel of his
saddle. From the internal pollution of that injury peritonitis quickly set in,
re- sulting in his slow death, over a five-week period, in 1087 at age sixty.
During the
ensuing funeral procession, mourners were forced to leave his coffin in the hot
sun while fighting a nearby fire. From that heat, William’s pus- and
waste-filled intestinal abscess swelled. Further, the prepared sarcophagus into
which dear Wil- liam was to be placed for all eternity had, alas, been built
too short to accommodate the full height of the ex-king.
Attempting to
squeeze him into that planned stone resting place, the overly enthusiastic
undertakers finally pushed on Wil- liam’s swelled abdomen to the point where
the body burst. That error drenched his burial garb with pus, filling the St.
Stephen’s abbey with that stench and sending the nauseous, overheated mourners
racing for the church doors.
He was
thenceforth quickly buried, and allowed to rest in peace ... until 1522, when
the body was exhumed, examined, and re-interred. From that point, it was left
alone “until 1562 when the [Calvinist] Huguenots dug him up and threw his bones
all over the courtyard” (Silverman, 2003). In the process,
they trashed the gold,
silver and precious-jewel monument marking the tomb.
Only a single thigh bone survived,
which was preserved and reburied under a new monument in 1642. But even this was
destroyed during the French Revolution (Grout, 2003).
Perhaps not fully aware of the relevant karmic
history, SRF in the late 1990s set plans in motion to
have Yogananda’s body moved. That is, they intended to relocate it from the
Forest Lawn (Glendale, California) cemeteries wherein it had rested since his
passing—down the hall from the tomb of Hopalong Cassidy—to a
planned shrine atop Mount Washington
in Los Angeles (Russell, 1999).
Arguably best
for everyone concerned, the plan was later dropped in the face of intense
public opposition.
In addition to
his life as William the Conqueror, Yogananda also claimed to be the reincarnation of William Shakespeare. There is, indeed, a vague facial resemblance between the two of
them, as between Paramahansa and professed likenesses of William the Conqueror.
And Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi is
inargua- bly the work of a masterful
author(s)—whether one regards its
sto- ries as factual or fictional. Further, Yogananda (1982) explicitly encouraged
his followers to study the Bard in particular:
Read Shakespeare and other classics,
and suitable portions from practical books on such subjects as chemistry,
physics, physiology, history of Oriental
and Western philosophy, com-
parative religion, ethics and psychology.
Of course,
having thus himself allegedly written all of William Shakespeare’s plays in
that previous life, none of the following, well-known bawdy aspects embedded in
those same works of art could have surprised Yogananda:
·
In Othello, Cassio’s
love-interest (aside from the wife of Othello himself, Desdemona) is the
prostitute Bianca
·
Significant parts of Pericles
take place in and around a brothel
·
The Taming of the Shrew has Gremio referring to
Kate as a prostitute by offering to “cart” her through the streets—a punishment
for whores—instead of to court her. In the opening “wooing scene” of Act II of the same play, Petruchio
speaks of having his tongue in Kate’s “tail.”
Tail,
in Shakespearean slang, denotes the
female sexual organ just about as often as the male, so there need be no doubt
that Petruchio, in his crudely
flirta- tious way, is trying to interest Katherina
in the prop- osition of cunnilingus (Colman, 1974)
·
The “playhouse poultry” in Bartholomew
Fair are prosti- tutes
·
In Mercutio’s “Queen Mab” speech from Romeo and Juliet, the name “Mab” itself was an insult, being
synonymous with “prostitute” in Shakespeare’s time
·
Measure for Measure has a brothel
run by a “Mistress Over- done,” along with whores lazily
whipping transvestite men. Also, the pimp Pompey plays comically sadistic games
with his fellow prisoners. The lascivious Lucio in the same script is finally
punished by the restored Duke Vincentio by being forced to marry a prostitute
·
In Love’s Labour’s Lost, “Boyet’s
line ‘An if my hand be out, then belike your hand is in’ is accusing Maria of
masturba- tion” (Colman, 1974)
·
In Henry IV, if “as seems
probable, Falstaff’s ‘neither fish nor flesh’ implies ‘neither male nor
female,’ then the corol- lary ‘a man knows not where to have her’ becomes one
of Shakespeare’s very few references to anal intercourse” (Col- man, 1974)
·
When Juliet’s Nurse demands of Romeo, “Why should you fall into so
deep an O?” the letter O [cf.
nothing/nought/ naught/naughty] probably “carries
the bawdy implication of vulva” (Colman,
1974)
·
Likewise with Hamlet:
HAMLET: Do you think I meant country
matters? OPHELIA: I think nothing, my lord.
HAMLET: That’s a fair thought to lie between
maids’ legs.
OPHELIA: What is, my lord? HAMLET: Nothing.
After the pun in country [i.e., “cunt’ry”], we need not
doubt that Hamlet is making a further bawdy joke with “Nothing” (Colman, 1974)
·
Finally, in Twelfth Night, Malvolio
accepts Maria’s forged letter as follows: “By my life, this is my lady’s hand.
These be her very C’s, her U’s and her T’s; and thus makes she her great P’s.”
Helge Kökeritz ... explained this
C-U-T not as a jin- gle on cunt but
as cut itself, a word which, I am
told, still occurs in English as a slang term for vulva. Kökeritz also proposed
that, following this,
Malvolio’s phrase “her great P’s” implies urination (Colman, 1974)
We find additional puns on
four-letter “focative” and “genitive”
cases; carets/carrots as “good roots”/penises; and “two stones” as probable
testicles. Also, numerous references, both humorous and serious, to syphilis,
the “malady of France” ... which, ironically, brings us full circle to the
Norman Conquest under King William, the bastard.
All of that
would, of course, make Yogananda’s strong empha- sis, a few hundred
years later, on celibacy and purity of thought for his own followers, a tad incongruous.
(“But Sir, we were just dis- cussing your writings!”)
Shakespeare
himself passed away on his 52nd birthday
in 1616, and remains buried in the Church of the Holy Trinity in
Stratford-on-Avon. Having perhaps learned a lesson from previ- ously disruptive
post-mortem experiences, the (modernized) in- scription on a sculpture of him
there reads:
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here
Blest be the man that spares these stones
And curst be he that moves my bones
* * *
Yogananda “shuffled off the mortal
coil” for the final time—i.e., entered mahasamadhi—in
1952. Immediately thereafter, SRF has since widely claimed, his untenanted body
began manifesting a “divine incorruptibility.”
A notarized statement signed by the
director of Forest Lawn Memorial-Park testified: “No physical disintegration
was visible in his body even twenty days after death. This
state
of perfect preservation of a body
is, so far as we know from mortuary annals, an unparalleled one.... Yogananda’s
body was apparently in a phenomenal state of immutability” (in Yogananda,
1998).
The editors at
Self-Realization Fellowship (in SRF, 1976) then waxed eloquent:
This is as it should be.
Paramahansa, flawlessly perfect soul that he was, could not possibly have
chosen for tenement a body that was not in pre-established harmony with the
pur- est conceivable soul.
And yet, as Robert Carroll
(2004b) has noted:
The statement [quoted by SRF] of the
director of Forest Lawn, Harry T. Rowe, is accurate, but incomplete. Mr. Rowe
also mentioned that he observed a brown spot on Yoganan- da’s nose after twenty
days, a sign that the body was not “perfectly” preserved. In any case, the
SRF’s claim that lack of physical disintegration is “an extraordinary
phenomenon” is misleading.... The state of the yogi’s body is not unparal-
leled, but common. A typical embalmed body will show no notable desiccation for
one to five months after burial with- out the use of refrigeration or creams to mask odors. Some
bodies are well-preserved for years after burial.
And indeed,
with regard to embalming, in the full text of Mr. Rowe’s letter, reprinted in the SRF-published (1976) Paramahansa Yogananda, In Memoriam, we
find:
Paramahansa Yogananda’s body was
embalmed on the night of March 8th, with that quantity of fluid which is
customarily used in any body of similar size.
And the “miracle”
then was what,
exactly? Apparently, only
that the body was relatively well
preserved even with the funeral home having used no creams to prevent mold, in
addition to the embalming. Yet even there, Harry Edwards’ (1995) research in so- liciting the opinions of a
pair of independent, licensed embalmers, disclosed the following experience on
their parts:
“I’m sure we’ve had bodies for two
or three months with good preservation. This is not unusual.
Creams are not necessary”
... “preservation for twenty days through
embalming is not unusual. We can keep a body a month or two without inter- ral an embalming fluid with a lanolin base will have hu-
mecant which prevents dehydration,
which is the major con- cern.”
As Edwards’
embalmers further noted, the circulation of air around Yogananda’s body would
have been largely prevented by the casket’s heavy glass lid, with that too
impeding the desiccation of the body.
So the
“miracle” then was ... what, exactly? Perhaps only that SRF has gotten away,
for over fifty years, with presenting a phe- nomenon which is perfectly
ordinary, as if it was some kind of “sign” to prove the divinity of their
eminently human founder.
* * *
Master had told some of us: “You
need never concern your- selves about the leadership of our Society.
Babaji has already selected those who are destined
to lead this work” (Mata, 1971).
Following Yogananda’s passing, the
presidency of SRF was as- sumed by his foremost disciple, James J. Lynn
(Rajarsi/Rajasi Janakananda), a wealthy Kansas City businessman. At Yoganan-
da’s prompting, Lynn had reportedly endowed SRF with up to six million dollars
worth of cash, land and bonds.
Mr. Lynn
himself was possessed of the following interesting characteristics:
Little Jimmy wore dresses and long
hair up to the age of six....
Rajasi did not
like ugliness in any form. For instance, if he dropped something on the floor
and spilled its contents, he
disgustingly [sic] walked out of the
room as fast as he could so he would not have to see it (Mata, 1992).
Since Lynn’s
passing in 1955, Self-Realization Fellowship has carried on with Daya Mata at
the helm, after Durga Mata had de- clined the leadership offer owing to her own
poor health and age (Mata, 1992).
A long-time friend
of Durga’s later offered her opinion of Daya’s character, in Russell (1999), as being “weak and idealistic” in her
younger days, but then getting “a taste of power” in India.
One interesting
change made by SRF, soon after
Rajasi’s pass- ing and Daya Mata’s corresponding ascension into power, was in
the very spelling of their founder’s name.
Yogananda wrote his title, Paramhansa, without the addi- tional a in the middle. This is, in fact, how
the word is com- monly pronounced in India. The addition of that letter was
made years later, on the advice of scholars in India, accord- ing to whom Paramahansa without the a, though phoneti- cally true, was
grammatically incorrect (Kriyananda, 1979).
That change was apparently made in 1958, coinciding with the
SRF-sponsored visit of His Holiness Jagadguru (“World Teacher”) Sri
Shankaracharya Bharati Krishna Tirtha to America. Tirtha himself was the “ecclesiastical head of most of Hindu
India and the apostolic successor of
the first Shankaracharya.”
Personally, I would never have followed
Yogananda in the first
place if I thought that he didn’t know how to spell his own name. (Similar
issues to the above surround the past “Rajasi” versus cur- rent “Rajarsi”
spellings of Lynn’s monastic name [Dakota, 1998].)
In any case,
under Daya Mata’s governance SRF has weath- ered several recent scandals,
including one involving the alleged sexual activities of a highly placed male
monastic minister who was reportedly
ultimately forced to leave the order. The handling of that difficulty allegedly included nearly one-third of a
million dollars in compensation paid to the unfortunate woman involved. In that
same context, however:
[Persons familiar with the details]
contend that several top SRF leaders—including Daya Mata—not only turned a deaf
ear to [the woman in question] after she sought help while still involved with
the monk, but that those leaders at- tempted to ruin her reputation within the
church even as they sought to preserve [the monk’s] monastic career.... “They [the church leadership] pretty much
destroyed [the in- volved woman’s] faith and ruined her life” [a friend said] (Russell, 1999).
That is all the
more disappointing, given the alleged “perfect- ed being” nature of SRF’s
leadership and its Board of Directors:
The people running [SRF] are
supposedly enlightened sid- dhas, which makes it even more confusing, because how dare lay devotees question, or worse,
challenge, what they have done? But then how can we swallow what’s being done
(radi- cal editing, photo alteration, and the rest of it [see Dakota, 1998])? (Kriya
Yoga Discussion Board, 2001).
In a letter to me, SRF defined a siddha as one who is “un- conditionally
one with God, partaking of all God’s attributes, including those of
omniscience, omnipresence and omnipo- tence” (Rawlinson, 1997).
Such beings
would ostensibly never make mistakes. Yoganan- da himself essentially confirmed
as much:
The actions of true masters, though
not easily understood by worldly people, are always wisdom-guided, never
whimsical (in Kriyananda, 1979).
A master’s word cannot be falsified;
it is not lightly given (Yogananda, 1946).
Regarding
“mistakes” and the like in Yogananda’s own life, however: It has been asserted
that, in the February 1934 issue of the SRF-published East-West magazine, he had praised the Italian fascist leader
Mussolini as being a “master brain,” who had been sent to Earth by God to serve
as a role model for humanity. (I have not been able to obtain a copy of that
issue myself, and so cannot corroborate that claim. Significantly, though, an
earlier issue of East-West had
approvingly included a short piece by Mussolini [1927]
himself, on “Science and Religion.”) A mere year later, how- ever, the same
dictator invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia), in what has been viewed as the opening
round of WWII.
Of course, that
a guru would sympathize with a totalitarian dictator should really not be so
surprising: There is, after all, very little actual difference between the two
positions. (Interestingly, Pope Pius XI, too, “spoke of Mussolini as ‘a man
sent by Provi- dence’” [Cornwell, 1999].) That is so, even down to both sets of
so- cieties beginning, in the most generous reading, with the best of
intentions for all, prior to their leaders becoming utterly corrupted in their
exercise of power.
Nor, given the
history of violence and suppression in our world’s secular totalitarian states,
should we be surprised to find exactly the same intolerance for discontent
being reportedly exhib- ited regularly on behalf of our gurus and other
“infallible” beings. Excommunications and threats
of eternal damnation
for disloyalty, after all,
serve to quell dissenting or independent viewpoints, and preserve the welfare
of those in absolute power, just as well as po- litically motivated murders and
bloody purges do.
* * *
A number of other kriya yogis have
contributed colorful storylines to the history of yoga and Yogananda, while
working both inside and outside of SRF itself.
One of those,
Swami Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters), was unanimously elected by the SRF Board
of Directors as vice presi- dent of Self-Realization Fellowship in 1960. (That
board is of course the same
“omniscient” group that had earlier elected Daya Mata as president.) Prior to
that, he had worked, organized and lectured within SRF since 1948, upon
entering the SRF monaster- ies at age twenty-two. On returning from India on
SRF business in 1962, however, he was forced to leave the organization, despite
his own entreaties to be allowed to stay and do anything except wash dishes
there.
In relating his
own side of that story, Walters (2002)
regards the reasons for that that split as being “essentially political” in
their nature.
That position,
however, differs somewhat
from what the Anan-
da Awareness Network website (www.anandainfo.com)
has to say. For there, a number of “sexual indiscretion” reasons are
alleged for that forced departure.
Whatever the
specific grounds may have been for his expul- sion, Walters had recovered enough by 1967 to purchase
the first of the lands for his own “world
brotherhood colony” or spiritual com- munity, the Ananda Cooperative Village,
near Nevada City in northern California. That 900-acre village currently hosts
a popu- lation of around three hundred disciples of Yogananda, their devo- tion
being filtered through Walters’ specific emphasis on “service,” in his casting
of himself as a “channel” for Yogananda’s blessings. Worldwide, the Ananda
group numbers around 2500 members; I myself was once officially among them.
The original
land—now utilized only as a remote retreat—for that colony was acquired in a
six-investor deal involving Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Also participating
in that land deal was Richard Baker
of the San Francisco Zen Center, a friend of Walters since 1967.
Walters’
motivations for founding the Ananda colony, and var- ious subsequent satellites
to it, included Yogananda’s (1946) ex- plicit
mission statement in the “Aims and Ideals of Self-Realization Fellowship”:
To spread a spirit of brotherhood
among all peoples; and to aid in establishing, in many countries,
self-sustaining world- brotherhood colonies for plain living and high thinking.
That goal has
since been removed from the “Aims and Ideals” printed at the back of every copy
of the Autobiography of a Yogi. The
reader can easily confirm, however, via any reasonably com- prehensive public
library, that it was present in earlier editions. (Any version with a copyright
in the 1940s or early ’50s should have it.) Yogananda voiced the wish for the
establishing of those colonies in public lectures as well, encouraging
thousands of youths ... to cover the
Earth with little colonies, demonstrating that simplicity of living plus high
thinking lead to the greatest happiness (Kriyananda, 1979).
Or, as one of
Yogananda’s other direct disciples, Kamala (1964), put it:
Master spoke to me about the value
of SRF Colonies. He re- ferred to the forming of groups within a city or a
rural area in the manner of hermitage
life, among members who do not desire to become renunciates, or cannot do so
because of cer- tain obligations. Such a life would enable each one to be in
daily association with those who share the same spiritual goal. He described
such Colonies as made up of married cou- ples and their families, as well as
single people, who have the will to
serve, and to live in harmony with one another. Master envisioned the idea as
one in which all may work to- gether in a self-supporting group wherein each
one is dedi- cated to God.
With his colony
in place and growing, thence followed several marriages of Kriyananda in the
1980s to female devotees at Anan- da. (Walters apparently still goes by the
monastic “Swami Kriya- nanda” title when interacting with his students, for
example.) More recently, allegations
of sexual improprieties with other fe- male
followers have surfaced. Indeed, expert witness
Pamela Coop- er White
reportedly told a California court in 1998 that, in her opinion,
Walters clearly fell within the profile of a clergy sex offender.
She added that he was on the “most destructive, predatory
end of that spectrum, that of the
multiple repeat offender who deliberately seeks vulnerable women to exploit for
his own sexual gratification” (Sullivan, 2003).
The same
article lists no less than eight women accusing Wal- ters of sex-related
infractions, ranging from indecent exposure to sexual slavery.
Walters
himself, however, has a different perspective on those alleged sexual
encounters. Thus, in a court deposition (Walters,
1995; italics added), in response to the accusations of one of the women
whom he reportedly admitted had massaged and mastur- bated him on eight separate
occasions in early 1982, he apparently stated:
Let me repeat that it was not a
romantic or passionate feel- ing, but it was a friendly feeling. I was not using [woman
#2]. I did not feel that I was using her.
Her statements
many years after the fact are not cor- roborated by my memory of her action
then, which was in fact to thrust herself upon me, against my pleas to
the con- trary....
I was trying to
be in seclusion. She and (woman #1) came down repeatedly to my house. And I
said, please, leave me be. I want to be quiet, and I want to meditate and
under- stand this confusion that I’m going through with (woman #7)’s departure.
I was in a state of emotional shock, confu- sion and trauma, but I did not in
any way notice at the time that she was being upset, hostile, resistant. Rather, quite the contrary, she was thrusting herself on
me.
The woman (#2)
in question was a twenty-something ex- student, just out of university, at the
time; Walters was in his late fifties, balding and overweight.
In any case,
judging from Walters’ other (e.g., 2002)
writings, unwanted attempts at seduction seem to be a recurring problem:
Many women, not unnaturally, saw in
me their natural “prey”.... I remember one attractive lady emerging into the
living room of her home from its inner apartment during my visit there.
Completely naked, she chased me about the room until I finally managed to make
good my escape!
Whew! That was a close
one!
The
hunter and the hunted—“the hungry,
attractive lioness stalks her
unsuspecting, innocent prey,” etc.
“There but for the grace
of God................................ ”
Some monks have all the luck. But
then, some monks appar- ently have all the “realization,” too:
At
one point, Swami
[Kriyananda] told me that he was great- er than Gandhi and Sai Baba, that
no one had the spiritual power he had (Woman #2,
1995).
The choice of
Sai Baba for comparison was, of course, a singu- larly unfortunate one: the
average housecat has more spiritual power than Sai Baba.
* * *
Norman Paulsen, founder of Santa
Barbara’s Brotherhood of the Sun community, is another direct disciple of
Yogananda. He re- sided in the SRF ashrams for four and a half years, from May
of 1947 to November, 1951.
Norman had a heart almost as big as his body. Not at all
interested in the theoretical
aspects of the path, he under- stood everything in terms of devotion....
“I don’t know
any of those things!” he would exclaim with a gentle smile whenever I raised
some philosophical co- nundrum. “I just know that I love God.” How I envied him his child-like devotion! (Kriyananda,
1979).
Obvious
problems, however, can easily arise from such a sim- ple perspective. Thus, in
a plot worthy of George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, Paulsen regards human beings
as having been created in the “lost
lands of Mu” by “The Builders.” That is, created by peace-loving space refugees
“from other worlds that had been de- stroyed by [their] evil conquerors [or
‘Fallen Angels’]” in a distant part of the galaxy. Such Builders were believed
to have outrun their pursuers, half a million
years ago, at speeds exceeding
that of light. In that view,
human beings are a genetic cross between The Builders’ own species and homo erectus.
The
aforementioned “lost lands” were now-sunken island con- tinents near to (and
including) Australia, allegedly destroyed twelve thousand years ago by huge
meteorites sent by the Fallen Angels, thus being
“literally blasted out of the Earth’s crust”
by
those collisions. Fiji and many of the other
islands between Austra- lia and Hawaii, Paulsen claims,
are simply the peaks of mountains from those submerged continents.
The “prequel”
as to how those Fallen Angels came into being boils down to a group of unduly
intrepid early Builders venturing into a forbidden area of the galaxy. There,
they became trapped within a violent magnetic storm, and were predictably
adversely affected by the negative energies of that region. Marooned on a
(logically) “Forbidden Planet” in the same zone, “dark and sinister” forces so moved the physical
bodies and minds of these unfortunate
souls that
[s]uddenly the fallen Builders felt
the urge emanating from within them to conquer and enslave the entire galaxy
(Paul- sen, 1984).
Their—and
our—story continues following the refugee Build- ers’ creation of the human
species, with their (Builders) having been discovered here 350,000 years ago by
their pursuers.
The Builders finally lost the war to
defend the Earth against their fallen brethren, the Dark Angels, twelve
thousand years ago. However, after
their defeat, they vowed to return and take the Earth from the evil darkness of
the Fallen An- gels who now possess it. That vow is beginning to manifest
itself today [via UFO encounters] (Paulsen, 1984).
Those insights
are based on Paulsen’s own numerous medita- tive experiences/revelations.
Indeed, in his view Jesus was “a Builder returned” to Earth. So too was the
late shabd yogi Kirpal Singh. Further, the man himself
claims to have been abducted
by a UFO piloted by Builders
from Jupiter. (Another “believer” with him, however, could not see that craft,
when it later reappeared to Paulsen’s vision.) Also, to have constructed a
“free energy” (i.e., perpetual motion) machine based on one-half of that
abducting ship’s drive systems. And to have destroyed Lucifer himself in an
astral battle.
Ah well, even
the wise Yoda was never more than one letter removed from “yoga” anyway; just
as the “Force,” or subtle means by which Aurobindo allegedly influenced world
events, appears equally well in George Lucas’
world. (Lama Serkong
Rinpoche’s
“furrowed face and large, pointy
ears had supposedly been the model for Yoda in the film Star Wars” [Mackenzie, 1995].)
Of course, one
would not attempt to hold Yogananda or SRF responsible for every idea purveyed by disciples
who have since left the
organization. Nevertheless, when it comes to UFOs one cannot help but draw a
connecting link. For, according to one of the re- spected and loyal direct
disciples of Yogananda whom the present author personally met at the SRF Hidden
Valley ashram, Parama- hansa himself predicted that “if America were ever at
war and los- ing, space aliens from UFOs would intervene.”
Well, let us pray it
never comes to that.
* * *
On top of all that, we further have
Roy Eugene Davis (2000; italics added), another direct disciple of Yogananda,
who rushes in where the mere “channel,” Kriyananda, fears to tread:
[A]lmost all of Paramahansaji’s
disciples have passed from this world. Of the few who remain, I am his only guru- successor. A few of
his disciples teach the philosophical prin- ciples and practices of kriya yoga;
I speak for, serve, and rep- resent
the tradition. It is my mission, which my guru con- firmed.
One might be
more inclined to take that seriously, had Yoga- nanda not explicitly stated
elsewhere that he was to be the last in the SRF line of gurus. Even Rajasi,
like Daya Mata, was only the administrative president of SRF, not Yogananda’s
“spiritual suc- cessor.” Were that not the case, one can hardly imagine other
di- rect disciples presenting themselves as mere “channels” of Yoga- nanda, as
opposed to claiming explicit guru status for themselves. Even as it stands,
that boundary is regularly pushed as far as it can go:
“It
is generally understood, now, that the wisdom in Master’s
teachings resides primarily in those who have been disciples for many years,”
[J. Donald Walters] wrote in a recent open letter to the Ananda community. “It
is also vitally important at Ananda that other energies not be allowed to
intrude themselves, as if to bypass Kriyananda and go straight to our gurus for guidance and inspiration” (Goa, 1999).
Or, as the self-published Ananda Cooperative Village
Member- ship Guidelines of 1976 (in Nordquist, 1978) put it:
Each prospective member should
understand that joining Ananda ... means, too, following the leadership and
personal guidance of Ananda’s founder, Swami Kriyananda, as the in- strument
for Yoganandaji’s direction.
* * *
In early versions of his Autobiography
(1946), Yogananda had giv- en the
following information regarding one of his disciples:
The Washington leader is Swami
Premananda, educated at the Ranchi school and Calcutta University. I had
summoned him in 1928 to assume leadership of the Washington Self- Realization
Fellowship center.
“Premananda,” I
told him during a visit to his new tem- ple, “this Eastern headquarters is a
memorial in stone to your tireless devotion. Here in the nation’s capital you
have held aloft the light of Lahiri Mahasaya’s ideals.”
The same
Premananda soon became Paul Twitchell’s first spiritual teacher—initiating him
into kriya yoga—around 1950, before the latter’s
leaving to follow
Kirpal Singh. Twitchell went on to found the
Eckankar movement, with “tens of thousands of fol- lowers through the Western
world” (Rawlinson, 1997). His author- ized biography was later penned by the
prolific New Age author Brad Steiger.
For the
startling, near word-for-word similarities between numerous paragraphs in Twitchell’s writings
and earlier-published texts,
see David Lane’s www.neuralsurfer.com website,
and his (1983) The Making of a Spiritual Movement. The inconsistencies between the
various biographies of Twitchell are laid bare in the same latter book.
Twitchell
passed away of a heart attack in 1971, “only months after predicting that he
would live at least another five years.”
Premananda’s
name and image have since been excised from SRF materials, including the Autobiography, apparently at Yoga-
nanda’s behest, following disloyal actions on the part of the former.
* * *
Of course, not every aspect of
Babaji’s kriya yoga mission is exe- cuted through SRF. There are, indeed,
numerous independent groups tracing their lineage to the same great guru.
A highly placed
member of one of those ancillary parties has described his own ashram life,
under a guru (Yogi Ramaiah, a.k.a. Yogiyar) who was himself a disciple of the
immortal Babaji:
In late January 1971, Yogiyar met
with both Cher [no, not that Cher—different
one; although the real Cher’s son is
a non-celibate Hare Krishna] and the author together and in- formed them that
despite all of the efforts they as a couple had made, the relationship should
end, because the genuine love which the author had for Cher was no longer
recipro- cated by her. If the relationship were to continue, Cher would soon feel forced not only to leave
the author, but kriya yoga as well. It was painful for the author because of
the ex- pectations he had for a long-term relationship with Cher. But he wanted Cher to be happy. Yogiyar
also held out an- other route for her as an “ashramite,” wherein she would
live in close proximity to him, and receive a higher level of train- ing
(Govindan, 1997).
Such
“high-level, close-proximity training” of the woman ap- pears to have worked
wonders for her spiritual development:
Cher dedicated herself to kriya yoga
and soon conceived a son, “Annamalai,” with Yogiyar (Govindan, 1997).
“I got you, babe.”
* * *
If one cares to step just a little
further off this already infirm ledge into the truly wild unknown, one can
easily find additional tales involving the Himalayan Babaji. Stories such as
the following:
Babaji has had many bodies
throughout human history. He can appear to you in any of them, or all of them at the same time. I have friends
to whom Babaji appeared in many bodies as a parade. This appearance
enlightened them. Since meet- ing Babaji in Herakhan in 1977, Babaji has
appeared to me in many forms—as
a woman on a bicycle
in Poland, as a bum in Washington DC, as a bird, as a
snake....
Babaji is the
Father of Jesus Christ (Leonard Orr, in [Churchill, 1996]; italics added).
Orr was a
pioneer in the development of Rebirthing therapy— a deep-breathing means of
releasing psychological blockages and ostensible past-life traumas (Garden,
1988).
Louise Valpied (in Churchill, 1996)
likewise relates:
One experience was when my dog
friend, Rafike, was seri- ously ill after
being poisoned by a paralysis tick. I left the vet surgery not knowing whether I’d see
her alive again. As I walked out the door, there was a little bird of a type
I’ve never seen before, dancing from foot to foot. Without think- ing, I knew
it was Babaji saying, “Don’t worry, I am here, she’s fine.”
This is one of
the times recently Babaji has communi- cated with me through a bird. This is
happening more fre- quently.
* * *
Not to be outdone, Yogananda’s
younger brother Bishnu claims a disciple, Bikram Choudhury. The latter has (literally) trademarked many aspects and asanas of
his own “heat yoga,” so popular in Hol-
lywood these halcyon days. Of that disciple-turned-teacher—who had George
Harrison as a student back in ’69—it is said:
Bikram brags about his mansion with
servants in Beverly Hills and his thirty classic cars, from Rolls-Royces to
Bent- leys. He also claims to have cured every disease known to humankind and
compares himself to Jesus Christ and Bud- dha. Requiring neither food nor
sleep, he says, “I’m beyond Superman” (Keegan, 2002).
The Über-“Man
of Steel” himself then apparently asserts that he has been the subject of
blackmail threats on the part of his fe- male students:
“What happens when they say they
will commit suicide unless you sleep with them?” he asks. “What am I supposed
to do? Sometimes having an affair is the only way to save someone’s life” (Carlson, 2002a).
Again, “there but for the
grace of God. ”
* * *
My own wholly non-humorous
experiences with Self-Realization Fellowship included nine months spent as a
resident volunteer at the men-only Hidden Valley ashram/hermitage outside
Escondido, California. That occurred from October of 1998 to July of 1999, af-
ter I had been a loyal member of SRF for over a decade. While the emphasis
there was never on “crazy wisdom”—indeed, the envi- ronment was fairly bereft
of any kind of wisdom—that still left
plenty to be concerned about.
·
Before being officially accepted to live at Hidden Valley (HV) as a
resident volunteer, the applicant is required to sign a pledge affirming that he
will regard his supervisors at the ashram as vehicles of God and Guru, and obey
their instructions accordingly. That boils down to being an inter- esting way
for the monks in supervisory positions there to allow themselves to feel that
their actions are divinely in- spired. Further, anyone who disputes their
instructions is being a “bad disciple,” whose insubordination they will un-
doubtedly publicly quietly tolerate, but privately discuss and disdain.
One is also
required to disclose his sexual orientation, and whether or not he has ever had any homosexual experi- ences.
For the record,
I myself am “straight as an arrow,” nearly to the point of being a hetero
sapien, and conse- quently
have not had any such experiences. The point here is not that I was uncomfortable
answering that question—I was not. Rather, it is simply a sad day when our
world’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” militaries are more progressive in their
thinking than are the same world’s “God-centered” ashrams
·
The late Tara Mata (i.e., Ms. Laurie Pratt, editor of Yoga- nanda’s
Autobiography, and former senior vice
president of SRF) is claimed to have been the reincarnation of Leonardo da
Vinci. Her own published writings, however, show none of da Vinci’s fertile
genius. (Those articles
are printed in old
SRF magazines, and sometimes available in
photocopy to lucky devotees behind the scenes.) Instead, those writings bristle
with biting and petty condemnations of anyone who failed to agree with her yogic
point of view.
In particular,
she expends ridiculous amounts of
energy trashing H. G. Wells and others who endorsed the standard view of evolu-
tion and human cultural development.
The “logical
force” of Tara’s arguments, however, comes
down to nothing more than a repetitive mongering of the fact that such a view is opposed to the Hindu idea of cy- clic spiritual development on
the planet, and is therefore “wrong.” In particular, she predictably trumpeted Yoganan- da’s (1946) reading
of those cycles as occurring within a 24,000-year period, which he associated
with the “preces- sion of the equinoxes”—a circular motion of the Earth’s ro-
tational axis with respect to the “fixed” stars. He (via Yuk- teswar’s [1977] The Holy Science) further regarded that
precession as arising from our sun being part of a binary star system—that
supposedly accounting for the movement of the stars in the heavens through that
cycle. In connec- tion with that presumed rhythm, other SRF monks have suggested
that “in the Kali Yuga [i.e., the ‘Iron Age’], the average height of humans is
four feet; in Dwapara [‘Bronze’], six; in Treta [‘Silver’], eight; and in Satya [‘Gold’], ten.”
As ridiculous
as that idea may be, it has a storied his- tory, being endorsed also by Sri
Aurobindo’s path:
The Puranas state that the duration
of each yuga is in direct proportion to the diminishing Truth. As a result,
man’s life-span diminishes also. In addition, they say that with the declining
Truth man’s stature too declines. Man’s
height, which is fourteen cubits
in Treta, is reduced to seven cubits in Dwapara, and goes down to four
and a half cubits in Kali (Nahar, 1989).
Notwithstanding
all that, the real explanation for the (25,800-year) equinoctial precession is
a problem in sopho- more classical mechanics. It is, indeed, based upon the same principles as those which cause the
axis of rotation of a gyroscope or spinning top to precess or wobble. (Our sun
may yet have a binary companion, though, if the research done at the Binary Research Institute is valid.)
Those errors
are thus particularly odd, since Tara Mata,
like Yogananda, was reputed to have been able to
remember her own prior incarnations
in those very same previous “world cycles,” aeons ago. She should therefore
have been in a unique position to bolster her arguments via that supposed
directly remembered experience.
It has further
been convincingly claimed that the as- trologist Tara relied on Edgar Cayce for
predictive read- ings, being Cayce’s
subject #778. (In Edgar’s view, Tara was one of his Egyptian followers, when he
himself was an an- cient priest there.) Cayce’s own work, however, has been
thoroughly debunked in Randi’s (1982) Flim-Flam!
and Gardner’s (1957) Fads and Fallacies.
For a comparable de- flation of astrology, see Susan Blackmore’s (1986) The Ad- ventures of a Parapsychologist.
Of course, we
have already seen that Aurobindo (1872 –
1950) made the same (da Vinci) reincarnational claim as did Tara Mata
(overlapping, at 1900 – 1971). Da Vinci him- self, interestingly, was actually
homosexual (Wilber, 1998). As to whether he
would then have been allowed into the ashrams....
In any case, in
a third-person pamphlet narrative, Tara
Mata actually styled herself as being an evolved “Forerunner of the New Race,”
on the basis of her own kun- dalini awakening. Abbot George Burke (1994),
however, re- lated a contrasting perspective on Tara:
Since she claimed that even before
meeting the Mas- ter she had fully attained cosmic consciousness, she doubtless
believed herself qualified to censor his words.
So great was
Laurie Pratt’s confidence in her perfected consciousness that she purchased
some books on Hindi, read through them, and proceeded to “translate” the entire
Autobiography of a Yogi into that
language—or rather into several hundred pages of gibberish that her illumined
intelligence told her was Hindi. When the vice president of SRF, Swami
Kriyananda (who could speak and write Hindi), noti- fied the officials of SRF
that her manuscript which had been sent to India for printing was utter gobble-
dygook, he was verbally rapped on the knuckles and told to go ahead and get it
printed. Only when he took Daya Mata and other board
members to the
publishers (at the publisher’s insistence), who proved to them that the manuscript (which
had been set up at the board’s insistence at great expense) was noth- ing but a
string of nonsense syllables, was it finally agreed to not have it printed!
Tara herself
was the granddaughter of the Mormon ra- tionalist Orson Pratt. The latter’s
responsibilities included attempting to explain the curious similarities
between founder Joseph Smith’s claimed channelings of their scrip- tures and
some lesser-known parts of the Bible
·
The late Dr. M. W. Lewis—Yogananda’s first American dis- ciple—is likewise
believed to have been the reincarnation of Sir Francis Bacon, a primary compiler
of the King James version of the Bible. (These questions regarding previous
incarnations are not openly touted by Self-Realization Fel- lowship, but they
are well-known behind the scenes, and never directly denied by SRF ministers.)
However:
[King] James I himself was said to
be homosexually inclined, as also was his eventual Lord Chancellor, Francis
Bacon (Colman, 1974).
King James was
also known to his friends as “Queen James.” Seriously.
Of course,
Oscar Wilde—who spent time around the Theosophical Society—himself believed
Shakespeare, too, to have been gay (Partridge, 1947). He had, however, little evidence
for that belief other than wishful thinking. (“Ei- ther those curtains go into samadhi, or I do”)
·
In one (question-and-answer session) satsanga, the admin- istrator at Hidden Valley “guaranteed” that an
unspecified number of the members of SRF’s Board of Directors will have been
rulers/pharaohs in ancient Egypt
·
In a Voluntary League (financial) Appeal
newsletter sent to their
members in the spring of 1989, SRF disclosed that the
city of Los Angeles had been considering a public transit plan which would have
disrupted their Hollywood Temple. City council, however, had thankfully been
persuaded not to proceed with that in
part because of SRF’s protests that
the site was considered a holy place
of pilgrimage by their devotees around the world. (“Shrine” was the actual word
they used in the VL Appeal letter.) Amazingly, however, in 1966 SRF had
reportedly filed a plan with the city calling for tearing down their Mount
Washington Hotel headquar- ters (Dakota, 1998). That building is considered by devotees
to be much more holy than the Hollywood Temple, as Yoga- nanda lived for an
extended time in the former historic building. Evidently, then, the holiness of
a place depends upon who exactly is planning on tearing it down. (“There’s
still no room at the inn, Sir, but if we razed it and put up a high-rise
instead”...)
·
Already back in 1999, according to the HV ashram admin- istrator in
a satsanga, SRF had hired an image
consultant. The relayed recommendation of that expert was that SRF should work
toward becoming known as “the spiritual or- ganization which lives up to its
ideals more than any other.” In light
of SRF’s reported poor behavior (CANDER, 2001)
in their attempted Mount Washington expansion, however, the irony there cannot
be missed.
Indeed, the
unhappiness generated in the surrounding community through that undertaking
included allegations of stacked neighborhood meetings. Those were occurring for an attempted expansion which was
compared to the devel- opment of “four and a half Home Depot stores” in that
ecol- ogically sensitive residential area. In return, “[F]ellowship supporters
have compared church opponents to Nazis” (Russell,
1999)
·
Midway through my stay at Hidden Valley,
a fellow devotee left the ashram to join the Peace Corps. Within a few weeks of that departure, the head monk led
a satsanga. There, we were told that
anyone who leaves the ashram to work for world peace would have been doing more
good if he had stayed and done “Gurudeva’s work” at the monastery
·
In related matters, the nearly functionally illiterate ash- ram
administrator, possessing a mere sixth-grade reading level, once opined in a satsanga that “scientists who use their
intelligence to ‘get famous,’ rather than for seeking God, are misusing that
intelligence.” A former administra- tor had similarly asserted that “Einstein’s
intuition failed him in his later years,” in that the great scientist allegedly
“wasn’t able to see” that the
accepted indeterministic quan- tum theory was right. (That formulation is
indeed not “the last word,” as David
Bohm’s Nobel-caliber work has shown [see Bohm and Hiley, 1993]. Thus,
“Einstein’s intuition” was right, where
these ochre-robed administrators, and many of today’s physicists, are
confidently wrong.)
The certainty
in that regard presumably stemmed from
the purported “wholistic” correspondences between indeterministic quantum
theory and Eastern religion/medi- tation. Those have been espoused
only since the mid-’70s
by misled authors such as Fritjof Capra and Amit Goswami, and quoted
approvingly in some of SRF’s publications. Goswami in turn once wrote a complimentary letter
to SRF, praising Yogananda’s
writings. Amit’s non-fiction musings on “quantum consciousness,” though, would
have been bet- ter published as explicit science fiction. For, in reality, such
“correspondences” are at best fortuitous, and can more rea- sonably be regarded
as arising from mere wishful thinking, on the part of individuals having next
to no understanding of metaphysics.
In any case,
how does one best use one’s intelligence “for God”? By entering the ashrams and
willingly doing what one is told to do by one’s spiritual superiors, of course
·
At a monks-only gathering at the SRF headquarters around Christmas of 1998, one of the
maternal members of the Board of Directors was said to have favored those as-
sembled with a joke: “What is an atheist? A member of a non-prophet religion.”
The clever riddle was proudly retold in the ashram at a satsanga, as a “Christmas gift” from those holy, wise and
“spiritually advanced” mother-figures. And all gathered there laughed
dutifully, not realizing that the line itself is simply a bastardization of a
classic George Carlin observation, i.e., that “atheism is a non-prophet or- ganization”
·
One evening, the monk who runs the SRF postulant (i.e., “new monk”)
ashram graced HV as a guest speaker. One of the points that he brought up, from
his unique perspective as head of that monastery, was that “the people most
likely to leave the ashram after taking some degree of monastic vows are those
who are the most independent.” While that is
undoubtedly true, the clear implication was that inde-
pendence and the ability
to think for oneself are bad things, when in reality they are the only
way of doing anything original in this world. Worse, suffocating attitudes such
as that allergy to independence turn the unthinking following of other people’s
blind guesses and bad advice into an “ego- killing” virtue. They further paint the inability
to so blindly follow, against one’s
own better judgment, what one knows to be wrong, as being a sin
·
Each one of the SRF line of leaders/gurus—their “popes”— from Daya
Mata back to Krishna, are regarded by obedient SRF devotees as being
infallible, and simply “working in mysterious ways” when it comes to any
seemingly ques- tionable actions on their parts. I, too, once foolishly viewed
them thusly. For, such regard is simply what I had been taught was correct, by persons who I assumed would never
deliberately mislead me, as I would never have lied to them.
As Margery
Wakefield (1993) noted of her own and
others’ involvement in Scientology:
I had made the fatal unconscious
assumption that since I was honest
and had good motives, then others must be too
·
James J. Lynn, personally chosen by Yogananda to be SRF’s second president, was a married man.
That is, mar- ried before, during and after Yogananda gave him the title of
Rajasi Janakananda. (His wife, however, was “both men- tally and physically
unwell,” and was not supportive of his connection with Self-Realization
Fellowship [Mata, 1992].) That fact, however, is conspicuously absent from the
rele- vant literature, e.g., from the SRF-published biography of Lynn’s life.
That anomaly
was brought up by one of the HV resi- dents in a satsanga period. The justification which the ash- ram administrator
provided for the lack of publication of that information was simply, and
predictably, that “that’s the way the Board of Directors and Daya Mata want it done”
·
The degree to which one is expected to “respect one’s eld- ers” as a good and obedient
devotee of SRF was under-
scored by the following (real) exchange, quoted during a sermon at Hidden Valley:
Elder: “How are you?”
Youthful Inferior:
“I’m fine. How are you?”
Elder (disgusted at the impudence): “Are you a doc-
tor?”
·
Or, consider the changes made to the proffered definitions of pronam/pranam over the years, in Chapter
40 of the Autobiography:
[pronam:]
Literally, “holy name,” a word of greeting among Hindus, accompanied by
palm-folded hands lifted from the heart to the forehead in salutation. A pronam in India takes the place of the
Western greeting by handshaking (Yogananda, 1946).
More recently,
however, the meaning of the (substitut- ed) word has shifted to something more indicative of the re- spect due the
ochre robe:
[pranam:]
Lit., “complete salutation,” from Sanskrit root nam, to salute or bow down; and the prefix pra, completely. A pranam salutation
is made chiefly be- fore monks and other respected persons (Yogananda, 1998)
·
Further, the extent to which questioning is discouraged in the
ashrams is demonstrated by the following example: Early in my own stay at
Hidden Valley, our Thanksgiving meal centered on a soy-based turkey substitute.
Following that feast, one resident pointed out in a written satsanga question that that food was
loaded with MSG, which many people are allergic to, or develop headaches from.
He also informed us that non-MSG turkey substitutes are readily available, and
requested that the ashram use those instead in the future.
The ashram administrator’s
response to that request was to relate the story of how, in the early days of
SRF, the nuns used to work “all night” (in shifts), manually prepar- ing
gluten-based meat substitutes for their festive occa- sions. He concluded by saying that he
didn’t want the kitch-
en at HV to have to work all night
in similar preparations (not that they would have had to, but anyway). Thus,
the ashram would continue serving the MSG-laced products.
And all
assembled smiled knowingly, that anyone would so foolishly try to improve the
ashram, and “resist what God and Guru had given us” there
·
At other times, the HV administrator related his own ex- perience
of having entered the ashrams in the 1950s as a “health nut,” and of being
concerned with the poor food be- ing served there. Upon bringing that up with a
senior monk, the latter’s response
was simply, “What Master gives, you take.” That advice sounds relatively fine,
until one considers that over Easter
(in 1996, when I first
spent a month at Hidden Valley),
“Master/God gave us”—a group of steadfast vegetarians—a box of donuts
containing lard.
Amazingly,
although Yogananda very explicitly taught that the consumption of white flour
and white sugar is un- healthy, both of those are staples in the ashram diet.
In- deed, sugar was sometimes even added to freshly squeezed orange juice, and
whole wheat flour was all but entirely ab- sent. The explanation which the
ashram administrator gave regarding
that discrepancy was that Yogananda’s ad- vice on diet was allegedly meant to
apply only to the spe- cific group of people to which he had been speaking at
the time. Personally, I think that’s nonsense: Yogananda regu- larly encouraged
his followers to eat only “unsulphured” fruit, for example. Today, that would
equate to it being cer- tified organic. Yet one will find (to my knowledge) no
ex- amples of that in the HV cafeteria (other than the produce which they grow
themselves, which is close to being or- ganic).
The Hidden
Valley menu, inconsistent with Yoganan- da’s teachings, is just the product of
a cultural lowest com- mon denominator among their kitchen staff. It is not
“what Master gives them,” nor did Yogananda’s dietary advice apply only to
“meat and potatoes” people fifty years ago
·
One of SRF’s respected monastic brothers will typically put up to
eighty hours of rehearsal into a Convocation speech— even to the point of
practicing facial expressions and hand gestures, according to the head monk at
Hidden Valley. There is nothing wrong with such preparedness, of course.
The majority of the audience at
those events, however, un- doubtedly assumes that those lectures are given
“from in- tuition,” with little or no preparation—on the basis of the monk’s
fifty-plus years of meditation—as Yogananda ex- plicitly taught and practiced.
SRF’s questionable billing (in their Convocation literature and tapes) of those
as “infor- mal talks,” when in reality they are highly scripted, does nothing
to discourage that perception
·
The same monk praised the devotional “receptivity” or “ab- sorptive
listening” of audiences in India, in contrast to the “intellectual
inquisitiveness/weighing” and analysis which Western audiences give to the
words of saints and sages. (By contrast, Arthur Koestler’s [1960] The Lotus and the Robot, Gita Mehta’s
[1979] Karma Cola and Sarah Mac-
donald’s delightful [2003] Holy Cow all
offer stunning reve- lations about what life in India, both inside and outside
of her ashrams, is really like, from a skeptical perspective. Strelley’s [1987]
The Ultimate Game does the same, from
a less jaundiced view.) As Radha (1978)
dangerously ex- pressed it:
The Eastern mind does not make the
clear distinc- tion between intuition and intellect as the Western mind tends
to do. The difficulty comes for the West- erner when there is an over-emphasis
upon the intel- lect at the cost of the intuition. The simple person who is
unencumbered by intellectual concepts is more
receptive. What can be done to remain recep- tive and not to have the intellect continually interfer- ing? Stop intellectualizing and just receive.
There are, however, other possible explanations for such Eastern “non-intellectual receptivity”:
The person buying [pan] puts it in his cheek, like a wad of
chewing tobacco. It’s said to have speed in it, which gives the user a slightly
glazed look and, after an initial burst of energy,
a sluggishness and a sway- ing walk.
Over the years
it amused me that many freshly- arrived Westerners would refer to the
“meditative” look on the Indians they saw, when, in reality, what
they were seeing more often than not was the result of chewing this
narcotic (Strelley, 1987).
Strelley
herself, prior to entering Rajneesh’s ashrams, ran drugs for a living; she
knows what she is talking about. One is, of course, always free to glorify the effects of one’s preferred narcotics. One is not
equally free, however, to confuse widespread, drug-induced stupor with medita-
tive spirituality, celebrating the former in the guise of the latter. Nor may
one then lament how “the West” too often lacks
the same “Cheech
and Chong”-like receptivity! And let’s not even get started
on the hallucinogenic use of pe-
yote (Das, 1997) and magic mushrooms
(Allegro, 1970) in
religious rites, in both East and
West.
Not unrelated
to the (non-narcotic) “mindless devotion” found in the East is I. K.
Taimni’s native observation that the bane of (conformist psychology) East
Indian thought has always been the
tendency to accept anything when it has been stated by an authority, without
further question- ing.
In any case,
the attempt to intellectually understand and “separate the wheat from the
chaff” is absolutely nec- essary if one is to retain any ability to think for
oneself, or avoid swallowing whole every anecdotal tall tale told “in the name of God.”
Devotion [to the guru] is valued in
Vajrayana [i.e., Tantric Buddhism] as a means to destroy
doubt. Con- sidered a refuge of ego, doubt
is no longer coddled—it has to be crushed. But if a choice must be made
be- tween doubt and devotion, I think we are better
off to prefer doubt. It is
essential to sanity, and therefore to
enlightenment; absolutely nothing in the path should be shielded from skeptical scrutiny, especially not devotion (Butterfield, 1994)
·
Yogananda founded separate uniformed schools for boys and girls in
India. Hidden Valley’s administrator once pub- licly voiced the opinion that
Paramahansa would definitely have wanted the same setup implemented in America
as well, had he founded schools here.
Such separation
of the sexes, of course, could do noth- ing to decrease SRF’s concern over
homosexual activities, given that residential boys’ schools are widely renowned for exactly the latter.
It is not surprising that proportionally
more gays would be active in the world of the [Catholic] semi- nary and
rectory.... That is true for any exclusively male situation—in the army,
the non-coed school,
the Boy Scouts (Wills, 2000)
·
SRF’s emphasis on the conservation and transmutation of sexual
energy as a means toward effecting spiritual (kun- dalini) awakenings leads
readily to a Catholic-like, guilt- ridden attitude toward sex on the part of
its devout mem- bers. For, if the choice is between sex and spiritual ad- vancement—i.e.,
if sexual activity leads one away from God
—how could one not feel guilty about
indulging in it? Not- withstanding that, in response to a satsanga question, the HV ashram administrator once explicitly
recommended that anyone who decides
against entering a monastic order for life should get married, so that his/her
ego won’t be strengthened by “being able to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants.” (As if the “real world”
is so lenient and flexible
to one’s desires! and as if there were a stupider rea- son to fall in love.)
That leads to the obvious conclusion that, unless one is going to become part
of the official mo- nastic in-group, he shouldn’t even try to live a hermitic
life- style, lest he be guilty of being “egoic and selfish”
·
The same administrator asserted in a satsanga that SRF members shouldn’t even live together before
marriage, as it would “set a bad example”
for others’ perceptions of persons on the
spiritual path. As to how a piece of paper called a marriage license
makes cohabitation more acceptable in the
eyes of God, that was never really explained.
One can,
however, fairly easily track down the source for that fossilized position. For,
all of it is simply a repeti- tion of views expressed by SRF’s Brother
Anandamoy (1995) in a recorded talk,
in essentially the same words.
Conservative
behavior and conformity, then, would ap- pear to be the order of the day, lest
one offend others by even appearing
to “do wrong.”
(Even long hair in the ash-
rams is taboo, by Daya Mata’s
decree, except for monks in India. Beards, as I recall, require permission to
be sought before they are grown, unless you entered the ashrams with one.) Conversely, even positive
social change is left to “less spiritual” others.
“Lost in the ’50s,” or even the ’30s, and proud of it
·
Anandamoy (1979) has further said that, owing to the dis- cipline
and rules laid down within SRF, “there is no gen- eration gap in our ashram,
though the ages range from eighteen to over ninety.” That may or may not be
true. What can hardly be denied, however, is that there is surely an analogous
“respect gap,” which keeps people just as far apart. That distance may be based
on the length of time one has been in
the ashrams, or the position one occupies, or just the color of one’s shirt.
(Blue = postulant, yellow = brahmachari, orange
= sannyasi.) For, when a blue shirt
meets an orange one in the monastic caste system, there is no doubt as to which
one is more spiritually advanced, and thus more deserving of being respectfully
listened to.
Butterfield (1994) described his own comparable expe- riences
within Trungpa’s Buddhist community:
It is easy to pull rank in an
organization where rank is given tremendous importance by practice
levels, of- fices, and colored
pins. When a senior student with a higher rank than your own betrays you
emotionally or perpetrates some odious piece of arrogance, at which you express
overt resentment and anger, the situation may then go over into the game of
one- upmanship. The ranking “elder” calls attention to your resentment as
though it were solely the result of
an ego problem characteristic
of your inferior prac- tice level.
Of course,
regarding generation gaps, it would be hard to sustain those in any closed
community anyway. For there, indulgence in the varying popular interests which
normally separate generations are discouraged. Further, any radical behaviors
of the younger generation would be left outside the ashram gates, in the
attempt to make the younger ones as conservative as the older, rather than hav-
ing the older generation meet the younger
on the latter’s
own terms, or (God forbid) learn
from them. That is, when closed community life is based around ideas which
predate even the “grandfathers” of the community, with all mem- bers being
expected to conform to those ideals, there is in- deed little to separate
the generations. One may even right-
ly credit the restrictive rules of the community for that.
In the “real
world,” however, it is exactly the relative absence
of such restrictions that allows for radical social, scientific and spiritual change. Put another way:
If the “real world” was as
conservative, homogeneous and “stuck in the past” as such orthodox spiritual
communities are, nothing would ever change for the better.
Even just in
terms of spirituality, human understand- ing has increased tremendously over
the past quarter of a century. Those increases, however, have not come from the world’s ashrams.
Rather, they have come from people who were, in general, too independent and
creative to tolerate the suffocating rules and discipline, not merely of those
closed communities, but even of the far less conservative “real world” itself.
Indeed,
radically creative breakthroughs in any field
are far more likely to come from people who make their own rules. Those who enjoy, too much, living within the confines
of other people’s discipline, in the misled belief that such a slow and painful death has anything to do with
spiritual advancement, are not the ones to make such con- tributions.
Conversely, the
idea that “when you are as great as Gandhi was, you can break the rules, as
Gandhi did” has got it exactly backwards. For, one only becomes “great,” to
whatever degree, by judiciously breaking existing rules— after having first
mastered them—to do things which wouldn’t have been possible within the
accepted con- straints. If one hasn’t ever broken the rules wisely, chances are that one also hasn’t ever done anything
truly original in life.
As Yogananda (1986) himself put it:
I follow the rules—as much as I want to, and then I say, “Down with
rules!”....
Now there is more attempt than ever
before to raise the average human being to a desirable
level of
culture; but there is always the accompanying
dan- ger of cramping the genius in the straitjacket of the mediocre
·
Interestingly, some Clint Eastwood “spaghetti western” movies are
pre-approved for Hidden Valley ashram viewing by monks and residents on their monthly movie nights. The Sound of Music, in contrast, is banned. The reason? In the
latter, Julie Andrews’ character is contemplating life as a monastic, but then finds “the man of her dreams” and “lives
happily ever after.” Screening such an idealization of ro- mantic love, however,
might “put ideas into the heads” of the people living there.
Guns, however, are evidently relatively okay
·
A resident volunteer at HV once remarked within
my range of hearing that
“everything you do at Hidden Valley gets talked about behind your back.” From
my own experiences there, and from hearing my immediate supervisor criticize
the ashram administrator, behind his back, as being “long- winded,” and offer
endless critiques of the ashram food, I know too well that that observation is
valid. (The aspect of his sharp eyes directed toward me included being critiqued, unsolicited of course, on the length
of my hair and the shabbiness of my clothes. As Thoreau once remarked, how-
ever: “Beware of enterprises that require new clothes.”) That widespread behavior
exists among a group of people supposedly concerned with their own
self-improvement. In practice, however, they inadvertently make a strong case for defining a yogi as “a person intent on
killing everyone’s ego except his own.”
Indeed, the
ashram administrator once stated his view on positive thinking as the idea that
“failure flattens one’s ego,” and is thus supposedly a good thing. Aside from
the problem that Yogananda taught nothing
like that, the obvi- ous converse of that idea is that to succeed too much
would interfere with the “killing of one’s ego” that ostensibly con- stitutes
spiritual progress. Thus, implicitly, even if an indi- vidual is successful, he
should not feel too good about those triumphs. It does not take an advanced
understanding of human psychology to see that, in the face of those taboos, the easy way to make oneself feel good is by “cutting off the
heads of others”—albeit behind their
backs, for to do it to their faces would make one a “bad disciple”
·
Through my work in assisting with Hidden Valley’s at- tempt at
setting up a software programming shop during my stay there, I was further
informed that I was “impa- tient” and possessed a “big head,” simply for
getting things done faster than they (and God) wanted them done. I was also
explicitly told that when I had meditated more and be- come more spiritually
advanced, I wouldn’t feel the need to be creative in writing books
and music. That is, I would just “serve Master’s work” by donating money/labor
to it, with- out presuming to do anything original or truly creative in life.
site:
Yogananda (1986),
of course, taught
exactly the oppo-
Do some creative work every day.
Writing is good for developing creative ability and will power. I am al-
ways seeking to accomplish something
new. Being creative is more difficult, of course, than following a mechanical
existence, but when your will battles with
new ideas it gains more strength.
In contrast
to that, but in accord with the attitudes
present within today’s SRF,
Butterfield (1994) observed the following within the context of his
own discipleship under Chögyam Trungpa:
Originality is unwelcome; it is
regarded as an im- pulse of the ego which must be processed out of the mind
before enlightenment can occur. “If you find something in my talk that is not
in Trungpa’s writ- ings,” said a program coordinator, “then it’s just my ego.”
In any case,
“big-headed” experiences such as the above
have led me to the firm conclusion that most of the “patience of saints” comes
from them simply not trying to get anything done on schedule. Or, from them
being too dumb to know how inefficiently they’re working. In con- texts such as those, it would indeed be easy to be “patient,”
get nothing done, waste other
people’s donated money, and take that as a virtue
·
I left Hidden Valley just after the original exposé (“Return of the
Swami”: Russell, 1999) of SRF and Ananda was
pub- lished in the now-defunct New Times
Los Angeles. That timing was just coincidental, but it did allow me to
witness the “sagely” analysis of the story given, unsolicited, by the ashram administrator. That reading, then, consisted simply of his mention in that context of
several monks he had known who had “fallen” due
to the temptation of women. There was, of course, no mention in his
analysis of the hor- rible (alleged) abuse of power on the part of those monks.
Nor was there any hint of the despicable reported response to that scandal on
the part of the “compassionate, saintly, God-realized” SRF leaders, as quoted
earlier.
The same
aforementioned “sage” referred to the news- magazine in which the above
information regarding SRF was printed (i.e., the New Times L.A.) as being merely a “smut paper.” He further
regarded the article
in question as being simply an attempt to “dig up
dirt” on Self-Realization Fellowship, as a means of thwarting their planned
expan- sion. That is, it was, in his words, “garbage” or “trash,” not worth
sticking one’s nose into, particularly when one has been warned of its nature
by someone ostensibly in a posi- tion to truthfully judge.
The very same
respected monk would, I was later told, deliberately drive away in his golf
cart when it came time to take his
daily medicine, pretending not to see the herni- ated ashram resident who was
chasing after him with that for his own good
·
The Environmental Impact Report required
for the physical expansion of the Mount Washington headquarters was sim- ilarly and explicitly viewed by that
administrator as being just a community stalling tactic. In fact, his response
to that obstacle was simply that
“people will find a reason to oppose SRF,” as if there
were no other grounds for that EIR
to be done!
Indeed, with
regard to one of the relatively recent SRF publications—I believe it was their
version of Omar Khay- yam’s Rubaiyat—it
had otherwise been noted that one of the artists and SRF members
working on the illustrations
experienced relevant health problems
as the publication date drew near. Those difficulties were explicitly chalked up to Satan trying to thwart the spread of
truth through Self-Realization Fellowship. Given that, it would be incon- sistent
for SRF to not have viewed any opposition to the Mount Washington expansion as
being literally devil- inspired. One would expect them to have exactly the same
attitude toward the present “evil, demonic smut” book.
Even as early as the summer of 1951,
Master often told me that Rajasi’s life was in grave danger and that Satan was
trying to destroy his body. When I asked Master why Satan wanted to destroy
Rajasi’s body he answered, “Because he has and is still doing so much for the
work and is helping a lot of souls back to God as His Divine instrument and
Satan is trying to destroy it so he won’t do any more” (Mata, 1992).
The phrase “paranoid belief system” springs to mind. Interestingly, the Moonies have a similar view of real-
ity and the influence of Satan as is
described immediately above:
“Martha, I have to whisper [from
laryngitis],” I apol- ogized.
“No, you don’t! It’s just your concept!”
“I’m sorry, I
can hardly talk. I don’t mean to be negative.”
“It’s SATAN
controlling you. If you yell ‘OUT SATAN’
all the way to campus, you’ll be fine,” Mar- tha ordered (Underwood and
Underwood, 1979).
Or,
as Yogananda (1986) described that same evil force’s
attack on him:
I
saw the black form of Satan, horrible, with a catlike face and tail. It leaped on my
chest, and my heart stopped beating
·
Daya Mata herself foretold (1971) the following global tri- als, as
seen by her in vision:
[The Divine] indicated that all
mankind would face a very dark time during which the evil force would seek to engulf the world.... [T]he world
... would ulti- mately emerge from the threatening dark cloud of karma, but
mankind would first have to do its part by
turning to God.
The question
then came up as to why this and other prophesied catastrophes had not yet come
to pass in the decades since their prediction. The catch-all response given was
that the world was getting “extensions” to that, based on the meditations of
its more spiritually advanced beings (e.g., Daya Mata herself).
Compare:
The leader [of a small religious
group], Mrs. Keech, claimed that she received messages from beings on another
planet and that she had been informed that an earthquake and flood would signal
the end of the world one day in December. But those who had been committed to
Mrs. Keech would be saved by a space- ship the night before. On the appointed
night, the fol- lowers waited anxiously for the
spaceship and of course it didn’t come.... The group was highly upset when
midnight came and went with no sight of a spaceship. But then Mrs. Keech
claimed to have re- ceived a message saying that the devotion of her and her followers had been sufficient to avert the impend-
ing disaster (Winn, 2000).
Or this, via
Elizabeth Clare Prophet and the apocalyp- tic Church Universal and Triumphant:
Ms. Prophet captured national
headlines with her reported prediction that the end of civilization would occur
on April 23, 1990. Prophet denies having set
the date, but local residents disagree. “She has post- poned the date at
least four times over the last year,” said Richard Meyer, a hardware store
owner. “Every time it doesn’t happen, she says it is because of church prayers”
(Nickell, 1998).
Or this, from an admittedly false former psychic:
We always gave ourselves an out, of
course, in the event that the prophecy didn’t materialize. The “vi- brations”
had changed, we would say, or people’s prayers
had averted the gloom and doom that we had warned about but that hadn’t come to
pass (Keene, 1977)
·
SRF explicitly prides
itself on being a spiritual organization “run according to business principles.” Hidden
Valley re- ceives the vast majority of its labor freely from volunteers, and
provides no extravagances in food or shelter for them. Nevertheless, their
business segment was barely breaking even financially, during the time that I
spent with them. Yet, all the while they were professing “intuitive” guidance
in their managerial decisions, and equating obedience to themselves and to the
higher leaders of the organization with obedience to God and Guru.
Indeed, things
were so tight financially toward the end of my stay in the ashram that the head
monk and my im- mediate supervisor there discussed, without my input, hav- ing
me spend my own money to provide a second computer for myself to work on, in
the client/server programming that I was doing for them. (I had already provided
one, for
$1000 U.S., prior to that.) Learning
of that, I informed that oppressively negative, short-tempered and visibly
neurotic immediate supervisor that I wasn’t in a financial position to absorb that expense.
That
micromanaging misfit’s favorite expression, in
the midst of Yogananda’s positive-thinking teachings, was “Life sucks,
and then you die.” Indeed, in his presence of undreamed-of-negativity it was
not safe to voice even guarded optimism. Toward the end of my stay there, on
more than one occasion when I would see that defective lit- tle gentleman
coming across the ashram grounds to accost me with one aspect or another of his
endless pessimism, I literally felt the urge to vomit. I have still not
recovered from what he put me through. In all seriousness, I have never
encountered a less spiritual
environment than I was forced to deal with during my six months working under
that particular monk.
In any case,
with regard to him and the head monk “helping”
me to spend my own money for the ashram’s
good, I further suggested to the
former that if money was that tight for them, then the three of us should get together and talk about the possibility of me loaning the
ashram several hundred dollars from my own meager savings, to be repaid when I
left.
Amazingly, the same weasel stopped me later that day,
to inform me that he and the head monk had discussed the situation—again
without me, of course!—and might just ask
me to provide a computer monitor instead! (I would then take that heavy item
back with me to Canada when I left, according to their autocratic plans.)
All of that
transpired while I was already providing sixty hours a week of extremely
efficiently done, profes- sional-level programming, in return for only a $30
U.S. per month allowance.
(The required
ashram work week was actually less than thirty-five hours. I put in the extra
time, in spite of my immediate
supervisor’s unsolicited discouraging of me from doing that, simply
because [i] I enjoyed the work, [ii] it
desperately needed to be done, and [iii] the sooner I com- pleted the training projects there, the sooner I could get the hell
away from that oppressive, micromanaging jackass. Have you ever had someone
literally looking over your shoulder, for minutes/aeons at a time, while you
were try- ing to write code? Thanks to Hidden Valley, I have lived that
dysfunctional “Dilbert Zone.”)
In all
fairness, though, the $30 allowance was still bet- ter than average. By
contrast, most ashrams—e.g., Radha’s Yasodhara, Rama’s Himalayan International
Institute, An- anda and Findhorn—charge you
significant amounts of money (currently up to $300 per month, in HI’s case)
for the privilege of doing menial
work for them in “karma yoga”
retreats, generally with shared accommodations. (People living in Jetsunma’s
and Rajneesh’s early ashrams likewise supported themselves financially. That
was in ad- dition to donating to the organization and paying for Raj- neesh’s
encounter groups, etc.) One of the attractions that many people feel toward SRF
is exactly that it evinces less of an explicit focus on money
·
In the midst of all that top-heavy yet inadequate manage- ment, I was informed—unsolicited—by the non-monastic
project manager of that enterprise,
that the whole pro- gramming venture was sure to succeed. That assurance was given on the basis of the
“enlightened” (yet medication- fleeing) ashram administrator’s visualizing of “blueprints in the ether” for those plans in his
meditations. Compare Daya Mata’s (1971) confidence:
The blueprint for this work [i.e.,
SRF] was set in the ether by God; it was founded at His behest, and His love
and His will sustain and guide it. I know this beyond doubt.
“And God will lead the way.”
Indeed, the
relevant manager’s expectation was that the
current project would bring in a thousand
hours of work per month. That, at least, is what
he explicitly requested from the associated devotee salesman, for an
anticipated programming staff of half a dozen people. The contract I signed
further specified that I would be paid $30 U.S. per hour. That works out to
over a third of a million dollars of anticipated gross income per year, just to cover the salaries. Plus, the project manager was
already building a house near the ashram, with the intention of deriving his
full in- come from the software shop. Thus, with his cut, the an- nual gross
would have had to be around half a
million dol- lars for there to be anything left over for the ashram.
Such rosy
pictures of the future, however, were not to come to pass.
Not even close.
I spent three
months working with the external project manager on that “content management”
programming, against the foot-dragging of my immediate supervisor. (By the end
of that period, even the hardly brilliant project manager was floating the idea
of replacing that defective individual.) After completing that “training in
negativity” period at HV, I returned to Canada, and waited for the promised
telecommuting work to arrive. And waited. For two full months. With not a
single hour of paying work pro- vided.
I was
subsequently informed, by the salesman, that
the external company
which was supposed
to have been the
liaison with the outside world for providing contracts had “gone under.”
Half a million
dollars. Zero dollars.
“Divinely guided.” “Blueprint,
schmueprint.”
Again, the Monty
Python reference:
[Eric Idle character:] Minister, may
I put the first question to you? In your plan, “A Better Britain for Us,” you
claimed that you would build eighty-eight thousand million billion houses a
year in the Greater London area alone. In fact, you’ve built only three in the last fifteen years.
Are you a bit disappointed with this result?
[Graham Chapman character:] No, no.
I’d like to an- swer this question
if I may in two ways. Firstly
in my normal voice and then
in a kind of silly, high-pitched whine.
After all that, my entry on the
Dilbert Zone website for March 22, 2001—“Biggest Promises Broken By Your Boss”
—went as follows:
TRUE: Full-time work, six-figure
[Cdn.] salary tele- commuting. REALITY: No work in first two months, ended up
$1000 away from living on the street.
—The Artist Formerly
Known As Bert
It placed
in the top five.
This life is a cosmic motion picture
(Yogananda, 1986).
“I
laughed. I cried. If you see only one guru this
year. ”
·
And just when you think it can’t get any worse, it turns out that
one of Charles Manson’s murderous accomplices in the late ’60s—still imprisoned
to this day—had spent time in the SRF ashrams as a nun:
During her freshman and sophomore
years at Mon- rovia High School, Leslie [Van Houten] was one of the homecoming princesses. She tried out
again her junior year, but this time she didn’t
make it. Bitter
over the rejection, she ran away
with [her boyfriend, Bobby] Mackey to Haight-Ashbury. The scene there
frightened her, however, and she returned home to finish high school and to
complete a year of secretar- ial training. Mackey, in the meantime, had become
a novitiate priest in the Self Realization Fellowship. In an attempt to
continue their relationship, Leslie be- came a novitiate nun, giving up both
drugs and sex. She lasted about eight months before breaking with both Mackey
and the yoga group (Bugliosi and Gen- try, 1975).
The fact that
Van Houten—the explicit namesake of The Simpsons’
Milhouse—was let into the ashrams
at all, of course, says nothing positive about the ability of the “ad-
vanced souls” at SRF to evaluate others’ character, via in- tuition or
otherwise. Indeed, less concern about sexual ori- entation and blind obedience
to an “infallible” dead guru or living mother-figure, and more about character
and the many positive aspects of independence, would serve the or- ganization
far better
·
And just when you think it really
can’t get any worse, you discover the white supremacist Jost (Joseph)
Turner (d. 1996), founder of the National
Socialist Kindred. For, Turn- er received kriya initiation from
SRF, and then lived for two years in
a
small intentional community
in northern California which was founded by one of
Yoganandas [sic] direct disciples....
He foresaw the importance of Yoganan- das [sic]
cooperative communities, and he realised [sic]
that it was his mission to fulfill that vision. To- day, his intentional
community is probably the larg- est and most successfull [sic] in the world (Turner, 2001).
Turner went on
to evolve and teach his own version of “Aryan Kriya,” claiming guidance and
inspiration from Ba- baji in that endeavor, and regarding Hitler as a “semi-
divine religious leader.”
Jost declared that Yogananda was not
anti-Hitler and supported
the non-interventionist America First
Movement during the Second World
War. He upheld the Korean War against communism and “foresaw the massive
problems” of multiculturalism (Goodrick- Clarke, 2003).
Well, who
knows. For someone like Yogananda, who was notably frightened of “Godless”
communism and sup- portive of the “God-fearing” fascist Mussolini ... who
knows. He had, in any case, been planning on “visiting” both Hitler and
Mussolini in 1936, following his tour of India, at the start of WWII (Inner Culture, 1935)
·
Finally, to put one more (though, sadly, not the last) nail in the
coffin of Undead Inadequate Management:
With regar[d] to the first edition
of the Autobiogra- phy of a Yogi, Yogananda
had copyrighted this edi- tion in his own name, not SRF’s. When SRF renewed the
copyright on the first edition, they renewed it in the name of SRF which voided
the copyright and put it in the public domain. Now that the original AY is in public domain, it is now on the
Internet at http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda [this is Kri- yananda’s publishing
house].
The renewal of
a copyright is a simple matter of keeping track of when it expires and under
what name it was registered. This is an inexcusable blun- der (Dakota, 1998).
And so goes the
“silly, high-pitched whine” which is all that remains of Yogananda’s
once-averred “Mighty Cosmic Om” within today’s Self-Realization Fellowship.
Imagine the
Catholic Church, minus its pedophilia but keeping all of the other
problems—surely including ones which haven’t yet made it into the news—with
just a slightly different set of “original Christianity” beliefs. Right there,
you’ve got a good approximation to today’s SRF.
“Everything I
ever needed to know about religion I learned,” if not in kindergarten, at least
from Monty Py- thon’s Life of Brian.
And yet, Python’s
John Cleese, ironically, has spoken in
support of New Age topics at Esalen, and elsewhere quoted the Russian-American “crazy wisdom” master
George Gurdjieff approvingly. (For
the debunking of that figure, see Peter Washington’s [1995]
Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon, as well as
Evans’ witty [1973] Cults of Unreason.)
* * *
Although I regularly skipped the
“mandatory” group meditations at Hidden
Valley, the head monk there
explicitly invited me, before
I left, to come back whenever I wanted to—I did not leave on bad terms with the
organization. Indeed, during
my stay, several of the office monks
there offered, unsolicited, to write letters of recom- mendation for me, if I
ever wanted to apply for a paid position, working at the Mother Center.
It was only
after decompressing for several months from the oppressive weight of that
experience, and comparing in detail the nonsense I observed there with the
relatively benign “evil ways of the real world,” that I came to the conclusion
that I had never met a complete fool in my life, outside of that setting. (I
have since met and worked for half a dozen others, but at least none of them
had “God on their side.”) Beyond that, it was only in discovering the SRF Walrus
(2004) website in late 2001 that I began
to understand that I was
neither the only nor the first person to regard getting involved with that
organization as the worst mistake of my life. (The Cult Busters—SRF Division site has since surpassed the Wal- rus, in
terms of the quality of its postings and their non-censored freedom of
expression.)
On the bright
side, I did meet a decent, direct descendant of Captain Morgan, the rum-runner,
during that same stay. That as- sociation has indeed, in recent years, endeared
me to some of the Captain’s finer pain-numbing products which, ironically, I
had never felt any need to consume prior to spending too much time at Hidden
Valley.
* * *
In the best of all possible
readings, then, naïvely taking Yoganan- da to be everything that he and his
disciples claim him to be, SRF shows how badly a mere two generations of
followers, in a short half century, can mess things up. (The gospels were not
written down until a comparable amount of time after Jesus’ crucifixion. For
the Buddha and Ramakrishna, too, the extant stories were not recollected until
well after their deaths. No one should then imag- ine that comparable degrees
of distortion as are demonstrably
found in SRF do not exist across all
of those sanitized scriptures and hagiographies. Conversely, if Ramakrishna and
Yogananda were as mixed-up as we have seen, what of the Buddha? Or what of the mischievous, amorous Krishna and
his “gopis,” assuming that there is actually some factual basis to his
mythological life? And what of Lao Tzu and Confucius? Are any of them more
worthy of admiration than are the likes of Sai Baba and Adi Da?)
In Yogananda’s
legacy, we have ashram leaders who, after fifty
years of meditation, cannot distinguish between the subcon- scious and the
superconscious mind—teaching that pruning a tree or driving a car (like Zen’s
view of practiced archery) are acts of intuition, rather than learned skills.
And the next generation of lemmings, if they disagree with that or with
anything else of what they are being taught, are simply exhibiting “ego.”
We also have
“perfected” Board of Directors members who work in such “mysterious ways” that
they require eighty hours of preparation to give an informal talk, or three
years to approve the purchase of a fax machine. (Those, of course, are the same
“sages” who will have been “pharaohs in Egypt,” etc.) Plus, we have ash- rams,
run according to “business principles,” which can hardly break even
financially, even with receiving huge amounts of free labor.
If you “ran
Egypt” in a previous life, you would surely be able to make good, common-sense
business decisions in operating a simple, nonprofit ashram with free labor, no?
Of course,
ashram-run businesses elsewhere are typically equally unsuccessful, for exactly
the same reasons. Indeed, failed financial ventures under the far-seeing
Jetsunma’s leadership re- portedly included a typesetting business, much
vaunted by her as being a “sure thing,” “partly because of the auspicious year
of its inception.” Also, a microwaveable female hair care device with built-in
gel packs, set to retail for $14.95 and fated to sell “mil- lions” of
units—according to a dream which Jetsunma had. (When the internal, ashram
company producing that product shut down, it
was reportedly over half a million dollars in debt.) Finally, a New Age rock group, with the
forty-something Jetsunma as its off- key lead singer (Sherrill, 2000).
Hidden Valley,
more conservatively, limited itself to growing herbs, vegetables and hibiscus,
processing third-party soil analysis numbers, writing software, and
manufacturing meditation arm- rests and portable
altars. Of those, the hibiscus,
soil analysis and
software were all supposed to be
“cash cows.” (That was the spe- cific phrase which the external project manager
used in referring to the anticipated,
web-based soil analysis income.) In practice, however, each simply gave support
to the classic wag’s observation that “we’re losing money on every sale, but
we’ll make it up in vol- ume.”
The San
Francisco Zen Center’s Alaya Stitchery likewise re- ceived essentially free
labor (in return for room and board, etc.), yet
often “lost money month to month, though its deficits went un- noticed for
several years ... ‘no one seemed to notice that we were essentially paying to
sell those clothes’” (Downing, 2001).
In Rajneesh’s communities, further:
Few
ashramites worked at the jobs
they’d been trained to do,
Ph.D.’s collecting garbage, architects working as handymen, filmmakers as
shoemakers, and ex-junkies as department heads (Franklin, 1992).
Hidden Valley
skillfully incorporated the same principle. That is, they were training
accountants who possessed no ability to take creative leaps in thought, to be
computer programmers, while they simultaneously
had established programmers doing office or gar- den work.
Plaster buddhas
or greenhouse hibiscus; hair care or soil anal- ysis; clothing or subsidized
restaurants; East coast Poolesville or West coast Escondido, or up north to San
Francisco or anything in between—all are equally “divinely guided”; all are
equally follow- ing “schmueprints in the ether.” The frequent failures of those
schemes, then, simply get written off under the idea that “99% of what happens
in the ashram is just for the [ego-killing] learning experiences of its
residents anyway.” Or, those flops get blamed on the residents’ working off of
bad karma, or their “lack of merit.” Why worry, then, about turning a profit,
even if you’re simultane- ously bragging that the organization is being run
“according to business principles,” and that your religion will be the one to
save the world from the clutches of Satan and other black cats?
And, to top it
all off, there is always unsolicited pressure (at Hidden Valley and elsewhere)
to the effect that “the more you meditate, the less you’ll feel the need to be
creative.” In the limit of that, of course, one would be a God-realized
vegetable, exhibiting neither independence nor creativity, and fit only to
contribute money or free labor to “the Guru’s
work.” (Is it any wonder
that
these places get called “cults” by
people looking in from the out- side?)
Further, to
resist or question any of that nonsense gets one branded as having a “big
head,” by persons who themselves have not a creative atom in their bodies.
In such a
context, probably the best that one can say, with all possible sarcasm, is:
Think of how much worse it might all be if Divine Mother and a lineage of
avatar gurus weren’t guiding their actions!
Of course, the
same best-case (reincarnational) scenario would raise additional questions with
regard to karma and the overall behavior which one might expect from avatars
and their ilk—e.g., in terms of beheading Saxons and Shakespearian bawdy. For,
if Yogananda was freed many lifetimes ago, yet was incarnated rela- tively
recently as both William the Conqueror and William Shake- speare, then both of
those—as reincarnations of Arjuna, if nothing else—must have been either
avatars or very close to such “perfec- tion.”
One might yet
feebly try to excuse William the Bastard’s non- saintly behaviors by suggesting
that they were a product of his po- litical position and period of history.
That is, if one is willing to ne- glect his violently ill-tempered behavior toward
his wife, which
can be given no such absolution.
Fine. And
Shakespeare’s equally non-saintly bawdiness was then comparably “someone else’s
fault” ... how? For, the better se- lections from amongst those “cunt’ry
matters” would hardly have been out of place in Dan Savage’s syndicated “Savage Love” sex- fetish advice column in the New Times L.A. (and elsewhere), which to SRFers was explicitly merely a
“smut paper.” Yet, “conquering” karma does not transmute to sexual karma except
via double en- tendres. And besides, avatars are not supposed to carry karma
from one lifetime to another, much less create new karma in each succeeding
“compassionate incarnation,” as Daya Mata (1971) her- self explained:
When any soul, even a Christ,
descends into the world of du- ality and takes on a human form, he thereby
accepts certain limitations. But taking on the compulsions of the law of kar-
ma is not one of them. He still remains above and beyond all karma.
At any rate,
getting thee “to a nunnery,” whether run by SRF or otherwise is, as we have
seen too clearly and too often, sadly more likely to increase one’s problems
than to offer balm for them. Doth Ophelia’s river, then, beckon?
Of course, in
Shakespeare’s day “nunnery” meant both “broth- el” and “monastery.” Since
Hamlet could not have been telling Ophelia to avoid sex by going to a brothel,
however, the monastic meaning was evidently the intended one.
Again, though,
with irony—damned irony—probably no one has ever been driven to the madhouse
via the whorehouse. (That is, aside
from untreated syphilis which, again, is not absent from the holy Shakespeare’s
plays.) The same claim, however, clearly cannot be made with regard to our
world’s monasteries and their guru-figures. For they, indeed, have surely
contributed to more than one sincere seeker’s literal and clinical depression
and mad- ness, via psychological binds, alleged spiritually incestuous sexual
abuse, crippling negativity and more. All “in the name of God,” and for the purported “benefit of all
sentient beings.”
* * *
What, though—no widespread, hot ‘n’
heavy sex in the SRF ash- rams? Do the monks not sneak out over the Mother
Center walls down to Sunset Boulevard on sultry summer nights, their monthly
allowance in hand? Do voluptuous young nuns not pair off with each other’s holy
genitals for much-needed, slap-happy release? Is it really all service,
meditation, and sleeping with one’s dry
monas- tic hands outside the pure white sheets?
Well, the
allegation has actually been made (in Russell, 2001)
that Yogananda may have been “screwing everything in sight” when alive. My own
reaction to that is probably the reflex of the majority of already
disillusioned ex-disciples of their respective “perfect masters.” That is, half
of me cannot take the allegation seriously, given the many testimonials to his
integrity from his disciples. Testimony, that is, such as from one of SRF’s
most re- spected monastic brothers, who “speaks joyfully of his guru’s over-
whelming love, humility
and gentleness, his deep respect
for others and his boundless
desire to serve” (in Watanabe, 1998).
Of course, the
brother in question, having entered the ash- rams nearly a quarter century
after Yogananda’s passing, never actually
met the “avatar.” That is, he is simply parroting the party
line, speaking what he would imagine to be true. But that is par for the course in spirituality.
Regardless, the
other half of me would actually like for
every alleged indiscretion on the
part of “the Bastard and the Bard” to be true, for the whole mess to have been pure baloney from
the begin- ning.
As a bottom line, then, SRF in its current state can take a (for- mer) disciple such as myself, who would never have dreamed
of being disloyal to the guru or his organization, and turn him into someone who would like for the worst accusations against them to be true. That is, if they could change
me in this way, they could change anyone—or, at least, change
anyone who was willing to see. Yogananda’s claim to be able to walk on fire might
only make him a fool, for
genuinely believing that his purported spiritual ad- vancement, rather
than the laws of physics,
were the source
of that “yogic power.”
Likewise for his many wildly wrong prophecies and his endorsements of Therese
Neumann and of his “Perfume Saint.” His comparable “ability”
to stop his pulse in one wrist, however,
unless one takes that as a real parapsychological phenomenon—
which I do not—makes him something much
worse.
Personally,
even with that, I still consider Yogananda to have been among the less harmful
of the spiritual leaders covered here- in, comparable to the Dalai
Lama, Aurobindo or Ramana Maharshi if the allegations about his
“harem” are false, or somewhere below them if those claims are true. Being the “sanest
man in the asy- lum,” however, is hardly something to crow about.
And even in
that grouping, one would keep in mind that the claims made by both Aurobindo
and Maharshi leave one with very little confidence
in their respective abilities to distinguish fantasy from reality—plus, there
is the significant problem of Maharshi’s documented caste bigotry. Further, the
Dalai Lama these days is functioning more as a mere moral guide than as a guru
or “savior of humankind.” That,
however, is a good thing, as his reported be- havior in the Karmapa Lama
controversy has been consistently less than inspiring. Likewise with his reported attitude
when faced with allegations of
sexual exploitation against Sogyal Rinpoche, best-selling author of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying:
“The Dalai Lama has known about this
for years and done nothing. There is a real code of secrecy and silence,” said
[Victoria] Barlow (Lattin, 1994).
Interestingly,
contemporary disaffected disciples of Yoganan- da, in spite of their own
disillusion, have yet proposed that no one should be informed about the
behind-the-scenes issues with SRF until they have been involved with the
organization for at least a decade. By that point, it is believed, they may
have begun to lose some of their initial idealism on their own, being then more willing to listen to the possibility that
the guru and his organization are less than perfect. For my own part, however,
I disagree completely with that
approach. After all, many of the most committed stu- dents of any spiritual
path will undertake a long-term, residential stay within their first ten years
or so. And it is exactly in that con- text where the real damage is done. I
speak from experience on all of those points.
Further, ten
years might as well be a hundred if one is only having contact with such a
community from “outside,” via books, printed lessons, or mere casual and
occasional contact. For, all of those have been carefully edited to ensure that
nothing uncompli- mentary about the organization is ever revealed through them.
(Compare simply attending Mass as a lay Catholic, versus being imprisoned in
the organization as a sodomized altar boy or a mo- nastic. Indeed,
if we have learned one thing from Bette Midler,
it is that “from a distance
there is harmony” ... even if, up close, the situation is very different.)
One may well
not be willing to consider the possibility that any of the reported “dirt” on one’s favorite organization could
be true during one’s initial honeymoon period with it. To suggest, however,
that having that dirt swept under the rug is preferable to at least being made
aware of it, and thus being in a position to make relatively informed decisions
about one’s future there, strikes me
as ridiculous. When dealing with our world’s religious/ spiritual organizations
in the long term, such ignorance is not bliss,
nor is it a path to anything but pain.
As Bailey and
Bailey (2003) put it, when discussing the
con- cerns increasingly surrounding Sai Baba:
This is an opportunity to become aware of [the reported prob- lems], thus moving into a position
enabling informed choice, rather than one coming from ignorance.
Lacking the
information on which to base such an informed decision leads to a very
predictable end, which another former dis- ciple of Sai Baba suitably noted:
The intense desire I have to expose
him now is directly pro- portionate to the amount of devotion I gave him (in Brown, 2000).
* * *
Of course, one would not expect to
publicize even such relatively lukewarm negative information as all this
without causing offense among the “believers.” At the very least, as others who
have spo- ken out against the ungodly aspects of their respective paths have
discovered, one would have one’s
motives (in profit,
fame, bias, sen- sationalism, etc.) in doing so
questioned. (Even established news- papers which dared to speak out against
Catholic clergy abuse in the mid-’80s were accused of “yellow journalism” by
less- courageous competitors who could not believe that the stories were true [Berry, 1992]. But as we all know by now, the
horrific tales there are, too often, indeed sadly true.) Not surprisingly,
then, re- actions to elements of the
above mild exposé of Hidden Valley
have included my being called a “whinner” (sic)—by
someone who evi- dently confuses thorough attention to detail (e.g., in
spelling) with whining—and a
“cowered” (sic).
Speaking out against what one has found to be wrong
with our world’s spiritual
environments may be a lot of things, but it is not the product of cowardice, as anyone who has ever been driven by
conscience and anguish to do it knows well. That is so particularly when the
objections to the “teaching” are raised with one’s name being attached to them,
as opposed to being posted anonymously for (justified) fear of retribution. The
real cowardice in those situa- tions rather comes from the remaining loyal
members of the or- ganization who attempt, anonymously, to intimidate
disaffected followers into remaining silent.
And, one need
not have suffered every possible mistreatment at the hands of one or another
divinely inspired fool or “vehicle of God” to have suffered enough that one is more than justified
in speaking out against it, both for one’s own healing and to warn others.
So “kill the
messenger” for all of this, if you must. For, we all have profound, if merely
implicit, emotional involvements in hav- ing our professional ideas be correct,
in maintaining our own self- images, and in preserving our dearest human
relationships. None of those cherished investments, however, can compare with
the value placed on one’s religion
and salvation/enlightenment, for
anyone deeply committed to those.
Conversely, the discomfort felt in the potential loss of any secular perk would
surely be minor compared to the panic induced when one’s salvation is
threatened. The one who would deign to thus “threaten” should then clearly be
prepared, with no few deep breaths, to be more hated than loved for his efforts.
In applying
that principle to the present author, though, real- ize that (i) every alleged
abuse and ludicrous “divine” claim cov- ered herein, with the sole exception of
my own experiences at Hid- den Valley, had already been put into print
elsewhere; and (ii) I myself have lost my religion through doing this thorough
research. That is, when I began this writing, in late 2003, I still believed that Yogananda was all that he claimed to
be, and that it was just his followers who had subsequently messed up his organization.
Indeed, I still accepted, at that point, that the “enlightenment” at- tained to
by himself and by the likes of Ken Wilber and Rama- krishna, etc., was a goal
worth pursuing.
Sadly, I now know much better.
To state
another obvious point: When we have, by the monks’ own admission, many
individuals arriving at Hidden Valley (and elsewhere) believing that every monk
there is a “perfected being,” then every
imperfection in those “holy” individuals immediately becomes relevant and
worth documenting. To be categorized as a “whinner” or a “cowered” for that is
a small price to pay for show- ing that these people are not what they seem
(and happily role- play) to be.
Reactions to my
documentation of the shortcomings within Self-Realization Fellowship have also
included the unsolicited sug- gestion that if I was “uncomfortable” answering
questions about my sexual
orientation, then I should just not have entered the ash- ram in the first
place. The clear implication there, of course, com- ing from an openly backward
SRF member who was explicitly op- posed even to having gays in the military,
was again that only a person with “something to hide” would consider the
organization’s “do ask, do tell” policy to be worth mentioning.
That still,
however, pales in comparison with what an SRF monk, giving tours of the Mother
Center, said to me in the late ’80s,
when I was in Los Angeles to receive kriya initiation. For some reason the
topic of AIDS came up. The voiced opinion on the part of that monk,
then, was to the effect
that perhaps that scourge
was God’s and Nature’s way of cutting down on sexual promiscuity,
and
thereby of creating
a “holier” world. Yikes. Yet, that attitude
is not unique in the spiritual world. For while at Hidden Valley and glancing
through a respected yogic magazine, I saw comparably “compassionate”
rationalizations expressed there regarding the same illness.
More recently,
I received several hundred copies of the follow- ing abusive rant, in an
attempted “mailbombing” sent first from HiddenValleyLover@FirstReaction.com,
and then from fabricated/ spoofed web-based email addresses, by one
particularly defective, relatively illiterate, obvious member in good standing
of SRF:
I’ve been seriously itched by your
gossipy statements about Hidden Valley I’ve spend [sic] more than 3 years there and it’s been the best time of my life
so far!You’re [sic] an un- grateful
piece of shit, highly unethical and disturbed.And [sic] for your info I’ve been in SRF 2 times as long as you.
If you want to be able to keep using
your email adress,remove [sic] the worthless crap about SRF and
Hid- den Valley(all of it) [sic] from
your excuse for a website.
Can’t ya just “feel the guru’s love”?
Or, “What Would Yogananda Do”?
Of course, the
above threats could have come from any of
the spiritual communities in this world, to anyone
who had left the so- ciety and then spoken too accurately of the people or
the beloved “God-realized guru” there. Such responses are, indeed, “a dime a
dozen,” coming from devoted members of organizations which have every reason to
fear the details of their alleged behaviors getting out. And so, for them,
reality becomes something “from the devil.”
Being on the
receiving end of the above name-calling does, however, at least bring to mind a
comment from the late Canadian prime minister, Pierre Trudeau: “I’ve been
called worse things by better people.” On the brighter side, persons who have
themselves lived for extended periods on the inside at Hidden Valley, and be-
come as disillusioned as I have with that environment, have cor- roborated my
depiction of life there as being fully accurate.
Further, as far
as “gossip” goes: These disclosures regarding Hidden Valley are not trivial,
idle talk; and they are given first- hand, not via rumor. By contrast, the
respected monk who quietly informed me of the alleged
Tara/da Vinci reincarnation put his
own position this way: “Don’t tell
anyone ... or at least don’t say that it was me who told you.”
“Here’s a
secret everyone would like to know—but don’t tell anyone. But if you do tell anyone, don’t tell them I told you.”
And I’m the gossip?!
Finally, the
present author was a lot less “ungrateful,” and certainly a lot less “disturbed,” before those nine months of being hurled
on peristaltic waves of chronic negativity, real,
trivial gos- sip, and independence-robbing, ignorant pseudo-teachings in
the bowels of yogic hell. If I could do it over again, I would, in all deadly seriousness, rather live on the
street. Conversely, that ex- perience has at least rid me of a great deal of
fear: whatever else may come in life, I’ve already been through worse. (A less
positive way of stating that, however, is simply: “There is no one freer than
someone who has nothing left to lose.”)
But you need
not even believe me in any of this. For, other persons who have had comparably
disillusioning experiences with SRF have posted their stories, with much
additional “dirt” and al- legations of disturbing meanness, homophobia and
highly ques- tionable actions on the part of the leaders there, on the SRF Wal-
rus (2004) website. Many of those stories
are much more damning than my own
first-hand experiences, even if giving less complete portraits of what
daily life within the Hidden Valley ashram is like for
anyone who hasn’t checked his brain and independence at the door.
So: Yogananda
was the “Smut Merchant of Venice.” And he
in- troduced the act of beheading to England and he cut off people’s hands and feet for vengeance and he beat and killed his wife in his
“conquering” incarnation. And Tara Mata was the gay da Vinci, and Dr. Lewis was
the equally ass-happy Francis Bacon.
Happy now, SRF?
Because those problems are simply what happens when the long-documented,
inarguable facts, which any- one
could have researched, meet head-on with what a bunch of aged fools, closing
their eyes to reality, just pleasantly imagine
to be true.
* * *
Prior to my Hidden Valley sojourn, I
had worked for a year for a nonprofit, community-owned, politically correct
organic food store. There, the Board of Directors effectively had a position reserved
for a “competent idealist with business sense,” who would invariably
resign in disgust within a year, in
response to resistance from oth- er power-enjoying board members to doing
things intelligently.
Following the
“bad trip” at HV in California, I toiled menially for a month at the
headquarters of the Canadian branch of UNICEF. There, one former, disenchanted
donor sent in a news- paper clipping reporting
the inadequate auditing of a large amount of “missing and poorly
spent money” which the UNICEF
executives had allegedly touched. (Compare the U.S. Red Cross earmarking
monies collected immediately after 9/11 for “other projects.” That behavior
followed the delays of their Canadian branch in imple- menting proper
AIDS/hepatitis testing in blood donations, in the mid-’80s. The latter
shortcomings, in turn, led to their own role in the ensuing front-page “tainted
blood scandal.”)
In that same
(UNICEF) charity, as numerous donors discov- ered the hard way, requesting to
have one’s name taken off their periodic mailing list had about as much effect
as idly wishing for an end to world
hunger on a balmy summer’s afternoon, lemonade in hand. Indeed, some of those
former donors expressed their dis- gust with that repeated waste of paper and
postage by sending UNICEF their junk
mail, or other irrelevant materials, in the do- nation envelopes!
When I left that temp job, the organization was on the verge of
moving into a new headquarters in the most expensive rental area of the most
expensive city in the country. In response to questions from employees at that
time, the move was justified by the man- agement there as being appropriate so
as to more appeal to their large donors—as opposed to the trusting “little old
lady” contribu- tors, who would in turn express their heart-rending regrets
that they couldn’t send any/more money because of their own failing health
and/or poverty.
I have it on
good authority (unrelated to Hidden Valley) that the Peace Corps is no better
than any of those, in terms of effi- ciency.
The nonprofit
Habitat for Humanity? Their founder and presi- dent was fired in early 2005
amid allegations of sexual harass- ment. That dismissal further reportedly
occurred against the ef- forts of Jimmy Carter himself to broker a deal to keep
the scandal quiet (Cooperman, 2005).
The Boy Scouts?
They are currently being investigated by the FBI for having allegedly inflated
their membership numbers, to boost their funding from the United Way (Reeves, 2005).
And the
respected United Way itself? Well, in the early 1990s, that charitable
organization “became embroiled in a highly publi- cized exposé of its own
financial misdeeds” (Sennott, 1992).
After all that,
I can honestly say that I have far less
ideals in- tact by now than I used to. Yet amazingly, no matter how bad one
allows or expects for things
to be in the spiritual and secular world, they invariably turn out, upon
proper research, to be much worse.
One does not
ask for perfection in any organization—spiritual, humanitarian or
otherwise—knowing that it is run by imperfect human beings. One simply asks for
minimal competence, basic in- tegrity/ethical behavior, accountability, and the
ability to admit when they are wrong, to be able to correct their course.
One might as well ask for the moon.
Well, you live and learn.
Or, as the late Douglas Adams would say, “At least you live.”
CHAPTER XXVII
GURUS AND PRISONERS
AS WE HAVE SEEN, a common set of
alleged problems, even ex- pressed in nearly identical words, tend to occur in
our world’s spiritual communities. Indeed, the reported characteristics ob- served
are essentially independent of the specific beliefs espoused by the community,
and of the historical time and place in which
the spiritual leader and his disciples have existed.
Why would that be?
A large part of
the answer surely comes from well-known re- search done at Stanford University
in the early 1970s. There, Dr. Philip Zimbardo—later, president of the American
Psychological Association—was able to inadvertently transform a group of
“healthy, intelligent, middle-class” college-age individuals into “fearful,
depressed, neurotic, suicidal shadows” in less than a week. He did that simply
by arbitrarily assigning them (via the flip
of a coin) to guard/prisoner roles in a simulated prison environ- ment which they all knew was just an experiment.
The dozen
guards were given no specific training, but were rather allowed, within limits,
to create their own rules to “main- tain law
and order” within the prison, and to “command
the respect of the prisoners” (Zimbardo,
2004; italics added).
305
Each of the
dozen prisoners had been assigned a number in place of his name upon entering,
and was referred to only by that number, in a tactic designed to make him feel
anonymous and to dissociate him from his pre-incarceration identity. That is,
he was not to have that past as a guide for how to behave, or as a refer- ence
for what would be appropriate treatment of himself, for in- stance.
Monks and sannyasis are, of course, frequently subjected to a similar change of name. In
Rajneesh’s ashrams, as an extreme ex- ample, that was often effected within
mere days (or less) of the in- dividual’s acceptance of Bhagwan as a teacher,
even for persons not entering into
long-term residence there. (Uniforms—e.g., of Rajneesh’s saffron-wearing “orange”
followers—have the same ef- fect of “deindividuation” on their wearers.)
Living among strangers who do not
know your name or his- tory ... dressed in a uniform exactly like all other
prisoners [or monks], not wanting to call attention to one’s self because
of the unpredictable consequences it might provoke [with those being given as “discipline for one’s ego,” in the ashram]
—all led to a weakening of
self-identity among the prisoners (Haney, et al.,
1973).
Following a
brief rebellion on the second day of the Stanford incarceration, solidarity
among the prisoners was broken. That was
done via the psychological tactic of designating a “privileged cell” for “good
prisoners,” whose inhabitants could exercise free- doms which were not given to
the inmates of the other cells.
Comparable residence
in privileged rooms/houses, or increased access to the guru-figure, is often given in ashrams
to disciples who are the most loyal in following the
rules set down by their guru and
other superiors. Indeed, Milne (1986), Tarlo (1997) and van der Braak (2003) have all described
exactly that dynamic, alleged to occur under Rajneesh and Cohen. Comparable
promotions and demotions have also
been reported in Adi Da’s community. In SRF, by comparison,
residence in the “power center” of Mount Washing- ton is valued over
“banishment” to their ancillary temples in Hol- lywood, Hidden Valley, or
India.
In attempting
to break the will of their prisoners, Zimbardo’s guards resorted to the
non-violent humiliation of them.
In any ashram,
the comparable humiliation is done with the stated intention of killing the residents’ “unspiritual” egos. In prac-
tice, however, it kills their
closely related individual wills (i.e., their
self-esteem and independence) as well.
After a few
days, “parole hearings” were held in the simulated prison. There, prisoners
were given the option of being released in return for their forfeiting of the
money they had earned. Most of them agreed to that deal ... but then returned
to their cells while the parole board considered their requests. That behavior
came in spite of the fact that, by simply quitting the experiment, they could
have gotten exactly the same financial result.
Why would they
have behaved so? In Zimbardo’s (2004) expla-
nation, it was because they “felt powerless to resist,” being trapped in a “psychological prison” which
they could not leave without the approval of the relevant authorities there.
When a disciple attempts
to leave an ashram after a long-term stay, or to sever ties with a
“divinely guided guru,” it is often only after having played the
disciple/prisoner role for many years. Psy- chologically, then, having bought
deeply into that role, he cannot leave without the permission or blessing of
the guru. The latter is then equivalent to the superintendent and parole board,
holding the keys to “salvation” or release from the prison (of the ashram, and
of maya or delusion.)
To thus depart,
further, is typically equated with “falling from the spiritual path.” To leave,
therefore, is to weakly sell out the reasons why one entered the ashram in the
first place. That is,
it is to fail at one’s own enlightenment, the “only thing that really mat-
ters.” Or worse:
I am just temporarily in the throes
of my ego, they say, and I shouldn’t throw away my one chance in this lifetime
for enlightenment (van der Braak, 2003).
Eckists [i.e., followers of the
Eckankar religion] are warned that when they drop out their spiritual growth
stops, and they are at the mercy of the Kal, or the negative force of the
universe (Bellamy, 1995).
[P]otential devotees make a binding
vow of eternal devotion to Adi Da—before actually being allowed to be in [his] pres-
ence [Adi
Da’s followers] claim that breaking
the vow will
result in far
more than seven lifetimes of bad luck (in Bob, 2000).
We’d been told if you leave
Poolesville and Jetsunma, you go to Vajra hell. You are crushed and burned and chopped
up
over and over again, it repeats. You
are there for eternity (in Sherrill, 2000).
The Buddhist hell sounds as vicious as the Christian
version
—with torture by molten iron, fire
and disembowelment (Macdonald, 2003).
It is rather
shocking to thus discover that Tibetan Buddhism, for one, has fear-based means
of keeping its disciples loyally fol- lowing their gurus, which are every bit
as harsh as the Bible Belt visions of hell.
Consider,
further, that the Christian view of eternal punish- ment has long been viewed
by psychologists as leading to a rigidity in thought and behavior on the part
of the relevant believers. It has
also been seen as producing a “missionary zeal,” whereby per- sons concerned
about their own salvation would project those fears onto others, and need to
convert them in order to allay their own doubts. If that long-asserted dynamic
is valid for the Christian view, however, it must apply just as well to the
Buddhist perspec- tive. That is, it must produce related
behaviors, with “loyalty
to the guru” substituted for
“faith in Jesus Christ,” and a pressure on one’s fellow disciples to maintain
their own rigid obedience to the master then standing in for the Christian
attempt to convert “hea- thens” and ensure that the converts remain loyal.
Conversely, if
Christian blind belief can create an Inquisition, so too equally could the
standard Buddhist (“Tibetan Catholic”) teachings. For there, the breaking of
the savior-disciple bond, as with other “sins,”
generates punishments to delight the Marquis de Sade.
Thus, the state
of mind apparently evinced by the lama in charge of the Karmapa’s seat in
Tibet, in explaining to Lama Ole Nydahl what the purported effects
of his (Nydahl’s) breaking of the
guru-disciple vow would be, becomes both understandable and completely
predictable:
Although by title a Buddhist
teacher, the venerable Drub- poen Dechen sounded as though he had come straight
out of the Catholic middle ages. He would have also probably felt quite at home with the Holy Inquisition, since his letter,
in
spirit and context, seemed to have
been the product of this notable institution (Lehnert, 1998).
Similarly, from
its beginnings, the giving of money and food to begging Buddhist monks, like
the indulgence scams of the Roman Catholic Church, was a way for wealthy
patrons to purchase
merit, redeemable for their own future good (Downing,
2001).
Of course, as
always, one could avoid many of the problems arising from such teachings simply
by not believing too much of what one has been told in the first place:
A man, worried about the gruesome
Tibetan Buddhist teach- ings of the hell realms, wants to know what Tenzin
Palmo thinks happens after death....
[Palmo:] “I
once tackled a lama about it as by his defini- tion I was definitely going
there [i.e., to hell]. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he laughed while slapping me on the back.
‘We only say that to get
people to behave themselves’” (Mackenzie, 1999).
The fact that
Buddhism includes “proof-delivering meditation” in its path is actually
irrelevant in all of this. For, that in no way offsets the blind belief inherent in the claimed necessity of keeping the
guru-disciple vow, where the punishment for breaking that vow is to be cast into Vajra hell or the like. East or West, southern
U.S. or northern India/Tibet,
agrarian or postindustrial, all makes absolutely no difference. Rather, the
fear of long-term punishment will produce exactly
the same rigid reactions, and inability to walk away from toxic situations,
in the East as in the West. The univer- sal nature of known psychological
structures and dynamics throughout the human species guarantees this.
When [alleged] cult leaders
tell the public,
“Members are free to leave any time they want; the door
is open,” they give the impression that members have free will and are simply
choosing to stay. Actually, members may not have a real choice, because they
have been indoctrinated to have a pho- bia of the outside world. Induced
phobias eliminate the psy- chological possibility of a person choosing to leave
the group merely because he is unhappy or wants to do something else (Hassan,
1990).
That is,
individuals in so-called cults who have been taught that bad things will happen
to them should they leave will be no more “free” to exit those environments
than someone who is petri- fied of the water would be “free” to go swimming.
Father [i.e., Jim Jones] kept my
treasonous thoughts in check by warning us that leaving
the church would bring bad karma. He reminded us in his sermons
that those who had chosen to join were here because we were on the verge of
crossing over to the next plane. Without his help, we would not make it. Those
who left or betrayed the Cause in any way
would be reincarnated as the lowest life form on Earth and it would take us
another hundred thousand years to get to this point again (Layton, 1998).
And that
differs from Trungpa’s traditional “pursuing
disas- ters/furies” how, exactly? Conceptually, and in terms of its effect,
it differs not at all.
Further
regarding leaving: When one of the subjects (#819) in Zimbardo’s study was
labeled as a “bad prisoner” by his fellow in- mates after being removed from
his cell, he broke down into hys- terical tears. When Zimbardo suggested that
they leave the ex- perimental area, however, the subject refused, explicitly
preferring to return to the prison, in spite of feeling sick and even while
sob- bing uncontrollably, to prove to his compatriots that he was not the bad prisoner they accused him of
being. (When Zimbardo pointedly reminded the man that he was a subject in an
experiment, not a real prisoner, he quickly stopped crying, and looked up “like
a small child awakened from a
nightmare.”)
Disciples stay
in ashrams, in part, exactly for feeling the same need to prove that they are
not being bad or disloyal to the guru- figure and his inner circle of
“spiritually advanced” beings. No one wants to be a “bad disciple,” after all,
when “the guru is God.”
* * *
An
incident from Ken Wilber’s life may serve to further drive home the aforementioned difficulty of
leaving psychological “prisons.”
Wilber’s second
wife, Treya, suffered her first bout with breast cancer in the mid-1980s.
During and following that period, their unspoken resentments toward each other,
deriving from that stress, caused their relationship, and Wilber’s own life in
general, to deteriorate to the point where he was consuming
alcohol to the
tune of over twenty drinks a day,
every day. He was further doing little else but lethargically watching
television; and feeling de- pressed, not caring whether or not he ever wrote
another book. At the lowest point of that spite, he actually went out
gun-shopping, intending to end his own life (Wilber,
1991).
Rationally,
however, Wilber could have walked away from that
situation at any time. All that he ever had to do was to get into his car and drive, and never look
back. He had his book royal- ties, his high reputation in transpersonal
psychology—starting over without his
wife would, rationally, have been so easy. In the absolute worst fallout from
that, after all, he would have owed her half of their house and half of his
book royalties in a divorce set- tlement, getting his own life back in return.
To his mindset
at that time, however, there was obviously simply “no way out” for him from his
misery. Rather, suicide evi- dently looked “easier” to him than either
attempting to fix the problem or simply walking away from that prison, from which there was apparently
“no escape.”
By comparison, disciples more often than not “fall in love” with guru-figures who, in the long run,
do nothing but make their lives miserable. The one-sided attempts to untangle
the ingrown emo- tional codependencies as the relationship crashes, then, place
even greater constraints on the doubting disciple than for any secular,
romantic relationship. Thus, it is in no way easy there to “just leave.”
Indeed, such abandonment would again be equated not merely with “falling out of
love”—a plight for which there is an easy
remedy. Rather, one must deal with the guilt of feeling dis- loyal to the
god-man guru, and with the fallout from “leaving the spiritual path”—perhaps
for incarnations.
Most [so-called] cult members feel
depressed during the first few months of post-cult life. Some compare the
experience to falling head-over-heels in love, only to realize
that their lover was two-faced and just using them.
Others liken their in- volvement to a spiritual rape of their soul (Hassan,
2000).
Losing one’s [alleged] cult is like
losing the love of one’s life. The lover has lied to you, but the lover is oh so seductive and
satisfying, and submission is so thrilling (in Bellamy,
1995).
Belief in a guru, while it persists,
entirely overrules rational judgment. Dedicated disciples are as impervious to
reason as are infatuated lovers....
[T]he person who becomes
a disciple “falls for” a particu-
lar guru without being able to distinguish between dross and gold. The process
is equivalent to falling in love, or to the oc- currence of “transference” in
psychotherapy. None of us is immune to
such phenomena (Storr, 1996; italics
added).
I never questioned Bhagwan’s
insistence on surrender. One surrenders to a lover joyously, willingly. It’s
only when the love affair ends that you notice the paunchy jowls and sag- ging
muscles, the cruelties and indifference, and suspicion creeps in (Franklin,
1992).
Seen from a certain perspective, my
time with Andrew [Cohen] was a botched love affair (van der Braak, 2003).
It may be
difficult to walk away from a romantic partner who was once “the center of your
life,” on whom you could rely even when you had nowhere else to turn. Imagine,
then, how much harder it would be to walk away from a “god,” regardless of how
much that figure may be causing you anguish on a daily basis.
I
can’t describe the depth of pain I experienced in considering
the possibility that the one I had loved absolutely might be less than what a
God ought to be (Underwood and Under- wood, 1979).
Not surprisingly, then, given all that, numerous
former monks have admitted to
feeling depressed and suicidal within their ash- ram/prison cells.
Wilber did
later leave for San Francisco, “with or without” his wife, but only after
having regretfully hit her in response to an
ar- gument they were having. Disciples who have finally, after much
soul-searching, walked out of an ashram to end a promised life- long stay,
could frequently point to a similar “can’t get any worse” incident, which
finally brought them to their senses, and made them realize that simply leaving was a preferable option to suicide.
*
* *
Even among lower animals, lacking obeisance to a purported deity- in-the-flesh, the inability
to take the simple steps which would
lessen their own pain, in exiting
from a harmful environment, has long been known. That knowledge has come in
large part via Mar- tin Seligman’s experiments in the mid-’70s, in which
animals were given electric shocks in an environment where they could not es-
cape that mistreatment.
At first the animals fought, tried
to get away, and uttered cries of pain or anger. Then they sank into
listlessness and despair. Later on, in a second set of experiments, the same
animals were shocked again—only this time, by pressing a certain lever or
completing some other simple task, they could stop the electric current. But
they made no effort to do so.
The animals had
learned to be helpless. Due to their previous experiences, even when a means of
escape from the pain was provided, these animals were too defeated, perhaps
defeated neurologically, to take the simple action that would end their
suffering (Matsakis, 1996).
Being forcibly
stripped in public against one’s pleas to stop, or coerced into often-violent
individual or group sex (with or without a
“church’s dildo collection”), or into psychologically incestuous sex with the
guru-figure, would obviously qualify as shock or trauma by any reasonable
definition. So too would Rajneesh’s violent hu- manistic encounter groups, even
for people who knew going in that they might suffer
broken bones or be raped.
To a more
chronic degree, though, much of the emotional vio- lence and psychological
abuse reportedly perpetrated in the name of “ego-killing discipline,” as a
betrayal of trust and widely recog- nized “spiritual rape,” would also qualify
as trauma. Indeed, Tar- lo’s (1997) and van der Braak’s (2003) stories of
alleged discipline at Cohen’s hands are nothing if not descriptions of repeated
emo- tional trauma/shocks, humiliation and degradation. Further, those occurred
in an “intimate or bonded relationship” with the guru- figure, which they could not escape without being “bad disciples” or “failures.” And wherever
there is such inescapable trauma,
one will find instances of
both “learned helplessness” and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Thus, “crazy wisdom” or “Rude Boy” environments
in particular cannot help but be breeding grounds for exactly those ailments.
Further,
working efficiently at one’s assigned ashram tasks, and taking initiative to coordinate others’ activities with that, will
alternately get one highly praised
for serving “the Guru’s work” well, and then severely criticized for overstepping one’s
bounds and having “a big
head.” Such an environment—in the tension between serving the guru-figure efficiently, but not “too efficiently/egoically”
—is at least halfway to being rife
with psychological double binds. For there, one cannot know in advance how to
gain the approval of one’s guru-figure and other “superiors”—when, as every sad
dog knows, securing the approval of the master is all that matters.
Should there be craftsmen in the
monastery, let them exer- cise their crafts with all humility and reverence, if
the Abbot so command. But if one of them grow proud because of the knowledge of his craft,
in that he seem to confer some benefit
on the monastery, let such a one be taken away from this craft and not practice
it again, unless
perchance, after he has
humbled himself, the Abbot may bid him resume it (Saint Benedict, in [Goffman, 1961]).
Or, as Janja
Lalich (2004) described her own experiences
in a “political cult”:
Militants were expected to “take
initiative,” within the bounds of discipline; yet the reality of their everyday
lives gave them very little of consequence to make decisions about. Eventually, a militant who thought she was taking
initiative would be “reined in” and criticized for “careerism,” “grand-
standing,” “factionalizing,” or a variety of other charges that served to
stifle further efforts at independent action and to set an example for others.
Thus, one is
reduced to simply guessing which course of action one should take, without
knowing whether it will garner exultant praise or harsh blame. (Failing to take
sufficient initiative would be no
escape from that, rather placing one in exactly the same po- sition. That is,
for a given set of moderate actions, one might be praised for “knowing one’s
place” ... or harshly upbraided for not doing one’s job.) One possible extreme
reaction to such long-term binds is again violent neurosis, from “trying too
hard.” The other is severe depression in which, since one cannot predict the
results of one’s actions or find a reliable way to succeed or to win approval,
one simply stops trying at all. Thus,
one moves about purposelessly
and only in response to others’ explicit orders (cf. Haney,
et al., 1973).
* * *
It is indeed the most independent
disciples who are the most likely to leave any ashram, as the SRF postulant
ashram administrator noted. For, they will be the quickest to figure out that
they need to get the hell out of there, for their own mental and physical
health. The independent ones and those with integrity (guided by some clarity
of sight, as opposed to the “idiot integrity” we have previ- ously seen) are
thus always “evaporating off.” Consequently, the concentration of pathology or
pollution in the environment will only
increase as time goes by. And the long-term dependent/obedi- ent prisoners then
get promoted to guard (or inner-circle disciple) status, demanding obedience
and respect from all those below them.
Some individuals are
indeed able to leave any such closed en- vironment, via independence and/or
outside contact, in spite of the fact that neither of those are ever encouraged
in our world’s ash- rams. That, however, again does not in any way mean that
the ones who stay have the same
choice, and might simply be making a
different, equally rational decision.
Ram Dass himself, interestingly,
compared his own experience [with
Joya] to what invariably occurs in [so-called] cults. “Once you are in them,
they pro- vide a total reality which has no escape clause,” he wrote (Schwartz, 1996).
Any reality
with “no escape clause” would obviously not be an easy one to simply walk away
from.
I can’t express the amount of relief
I feel about being rescued by my parents [from the Moonies]. I know I could never have left on my own. It’s
hard for anybody outside of the experi- ence
to understand the depth of that (Underwood and Under- wood,
1979; italics added).
Recall,
further, the dangerous idea that as long as people en- tering a “crazy wisdom”
environment know what they are getting themselves into, that path may still
work to the benefit of the dis- ciples, rather than acting to destroy them. All of the participants in Zimbardo’s study, however, believed that they knew exactly
what they were getting themselves involved with. Indeed, they signed consent forms which are today posted online, after having
been
fully informed as to the nature of the study (Zimbardo,
2004). Fur- ther, as prisoners, they explicitly expected to have little or no
pri- vacy, to be kept under surveillance, and to have their civil rights
violated (Haney, et al., 1973).
Nevertheless,
that knowledge did not help those peons when faced with their bored and
respect-extracting guards. Nor did it make it any easier for them to “just
leave” that environment, or even to simply object to the treatment they were
receiving from their authority figures:
In only a few days, [one-third of]
our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs
of ex- treme stress (Zimbardo, 2004).
Tarlo (1997)
described similar behaviors, which she claims to have seen within Cohen’s
community:
There was an inappropriate sadistic
flavor to these [verbal] attacks on Sarah [as the house scapegoat].
Likewise, in Rajneesh’s ashrams:
[S]omehow the ego bashing [as
instructed by Bhagwan’s “guard” Sheela, who made no recorded claims to
enlighten- ment] seemed to be getting more severe, almost sadistic (Hamilton,
1998).
Consider also
the reported mistreatment of children in Irish Catholic institutional schools,
being frequently harshly beaten “for everything and for nothing,” without even
knowing why they were being hit so mercilessly:
Survivors describe a wide range of
weapons used to beat them on all parts of their bodies—whips, cat-o-nine-tails,
leathers, belts, straps, canes, sticks, tree branches, chair legs, hose pipes, rubber tires and hurley
sticks. Many of the leathers used had been reinforced by having pieces of metal
or lead sown into them.... One former inmate remembers a [monastic] brother who
used to freeze his leather in order to make
it harder and consequently more painful. Violence
was an intrinsic part of the culture
of these institutions—its aim and often its effect was the systematic
and thorough de-
struction of
the will of each and every boy and girl (Raftery and O’Sullivan,
2001; italics added).
A former male
resident of St. Joseph’s Industrial School in Letterfrack, Ireland, later
enlisted in the army and was captured by the Germans in WWII. Yet, he observed
that “compared to Let- terfrack, the German prisoner of war camp was like a tea
party” (Raftery and O’Sullivan, 2001).
In the
spiritual world, sadistic or “Rude Boy” mistreatment may be daftly viewed
as being a “good thing,”
for supposedly acting to
“kill one’s ego.” But no one’s psychology ever changes magically simply for
having passed through the ashram gates. Thus, the long-term negative effects
of such reported
cruelties are going to be exactly the same in “spiritual”
contexts as in the kinder “real world.”
* * *
Several days
into Zimbardo’s study, a standby prisoner (#416)
was admitted to the prison, without having experienced the gradual escalation
of harassment which the other inmates had.
Following
#416’s attempts to force his own release, via a hun- ger strike, from what the
“old-timers” assured him was an ines- capable “real prison,” he was thrown into
solitary confinement. Through all that, he was seen not as a hero but rather as
a trou- blemaker by the existing, veteran prisoners. Indeed, most of them
preferred to leave him in solitary confinement rather than give up their
blankets to secure his release from that punishment, in trade.
That treatment
exactly parallels the ostracism which any in- dependent or “disloyal” (i.e.,
troublemaking) disciple who breaks the rules set by his superiors or guru-figure will face in the ashram environment:
I’m living proof of why you better
not speak out. The
degree
to which I was scapegoated publicly
was most effective in keeping everyone else quiet (Yvonne Rand, in [Downing, 2001]).
Conversely, a
former novice—Patricia Burke Brogan, now a celebrated playwright—in the Irish Catholic Sisters
of Mercy noted of her own experience in that
congregation:
What defined you as a good nun [in a
hierarchy of senior nuns and novices] was that you obeyed the rules. There were
the three vows—poverty, chastity and obedience. But if you were obedient, that
covered everything (in Raftery and O’Sullivan, 2001).
A nun in the
Franciscan (Catholic) Poor Clare order expressed a comparable attitude (in Goffman, 1961):
This is another of the marvels of
living in obedience. No one is ever doing anything more important than you are,
if you are obeying.
Should you fail
to obey, though, prepare to be punished, not merely by your superiors but even
by your peers:
If you ... did not obey the rules of
the group [in the Moonies], love and approval would be withdrawn (Hassan,
2000).
Or, consider
the experiences of a female disciple of Chögyam Trungpa’s, who once
disobediently dumped a bottle of glue into the guru’s hair, in anger.
She was subsequently ostracized by
the Boulder Buddhist community, beaten up by several women of the community,
and left to shift for herself and her out-of-wedlock child, she claims (Clark,
1980).
When the same
woman left the community, intending to con- tinue practicing the master’s
teachings, Trungpa fiercely told her: “The lions will come to devour you.”
“I personally found that I was
punished when I didn’t want to go to
bed with Trungpa after he asked me to,” she says. The “punishment,” apparently,
comes in the form of psycho- logical rejection (Clark, 1980).
* * *
By the end of Zimbardo’s study, four
of his twelve prisoners had experienced “extreme emotional depression, crying,
rage and acute anxiety,” to the point of needing to be removed from the study
for their own good. (Those breakdowns were later interpreted by the
experimenters as being a “passive way
of demanding attention and
help.” Still, they were certainly
real to the persons experiencing them, regardless of what the subconscious
motivations might have been.) A fifth developed a psychosomatic rash on
portions of his body (Haney, et al., 1973).
The
prisoners who adapted
better to the situation were those
who mindlessly followed orders and who allowed the guards to dehumanize and
degrade them ever more with each pass- ing day and night (Zimbardo, 2004b).
Compared with those who had to be
released, prisoners who remained in prison until the termination of the study
... scored higher on conformity (“acceptance of society as it is”) (Haney, et al., 1973).
On a psychological test designed to reveal a person’s authori- tarianism, those prisoners who had the
highest scores were best able to function in this authoritarian prison environ-
ment (Zimbardo, et al., 1973).
Dr. Zimbardo
further characterized the prisoners in general, by the end of the experiment,
as simply “hanging on ... much like hospitalized mental patients,” blindly
obeying the commands of their guards.
Loyal,
beaten-down disciples, of course, “hang on” in much the same way. And, as the
SRF monk implicitly noted, the ones who stay
and adapt the best are, more often than not, exactly the ones who are able to
“mindlessly follow orders,” being free of the “delu- sive evil” of independence. Further, as judged
by their high au-
thoritarianism scores in Zimbardo’s study, those order-following ones are the very same individuals who most enjoy sitting in au-
thority over others. Put another way: The ones who send the deep- est bows to their own overlords
(“divine” or otherwise) also typi- cally crave
and insist on the most respect and obedience from oth- ers. Even without experimental confirmation, one could easily have discerned that dynamic simply in
common sense from one’s daily observations
of others. That, at least, has been my own experience. (Interestingly, like the “ashram
gossip” which one cannot
avoid in such “God-centered” environments, the conversations of Zimbardo’s prisoners, too, centered
a full 90% of the time on the
shortcomings in their
prison conditions, without
reference to the
outside world [Haney, et al., 1973].)
It is equally
clear that the prisoners in Zimbardo’s study were not capable of giving
“adult consent” to anything requested of them by the guards
or the superintendent—even though they were per- fectly normal, college-age
individuals going into the study. That has profound relevance to the idea of
sexual relations between guru-figures and their disciples. And that is so, even
in addition to any context of “spiritual incest” deriving from the disciples
viewing their leader as a “perfect father/mother figure,” as we shall see.
Ironically,
there is a Hindu story about a lion who was raised among sheep, and grew up to believe that he himself
was a sheep— bleating when he should
have roared, etc. That
behavior lasted un- til one day when
another lion grabbed him, pointed his face into the mirrored surface of a pond, and showed him that he was a
mighty lion, not a meek lamb.
The intended point
of that story, of course, is that in our soul- natures we are mighty lions,
simply behaving as sheep in our earthly lives. (Compare the other tale of the
king who went out among his people and forgot who he was, then living as a com-
moner until awakened from that delusion.) A more poignant appli- cation,
however, would see that self-confident, relatively independ- ent lions and
lionesses become dependent sheep when surrounded by other guarding/guru-ing
“sheep in wolves’ clothing.”
As one final
eerie observation regarding the Stanford role- playing: Before the termination
of the experiment, the rumor of an impending breakout from the simulated prison
had begun to circu- late. In response to that, rather than simply recording the
trans- mission of rumors and observing the escape, Zimbardo and his col-
leagues began planning how to foil it. That is, Zimbardo, as he later admitted, had begun to think and act
like the prison superin- tendent role he was playing, rather than as an
impartial, witness- ing social psychologist.
The prisoners
in that study were initially rounded up by po- lice, de-loused when checking
into the prison, and stripped of their prior identities by being given numbers
instead of names, etc., in order to make their prison experience as “real” as
possible. Like- wise, the acute
rebellion on the second day of the incarceration will have made the guards’ experience
more “real.” No such “mind games,” however, were played with Zimbardo himself.
Nor was he at any risk, compared to the guards, of coming to physical harm from
the prisoners. Yet his adopting of his self-assigned “role” came just as quickly, and just as
intensely.
How much
explicit “mind control” or “brainwashing” is then likely to be necessary, over
a sufficiently long period of time, to get the people in any context into their
roles, and turn their environ- ment toxic? Probably none at all—though that is
not at all to say that the use of such techniques would not cause things to get
worse, faster, for it certainly would. (“Mind control” is regarded as being
effected via techniques which include “sleep deprivation, special diets,
controlling information going in and out, peer pres- sure, extensive
indoctrination sessions, such as long hours of chanting, meditating, listening
to droning lectures and mild forms of trance induction that ... reduce the
person’s ability to think clearly” [Lalich, 1997].)
Interestingly,
rock stars, too, have at times sought psychologi- cal counseling to help them
step out of their adopted, onstage per- sonas, when those seeped too far into
their private lives.
Comparable to
Zimbardo’s slipping into the superintendent role, at one point several
disciples of the superintendent-guru Raj- neesh left his Oregon ashram without
warning. Rather than sim- ply observing that with enlightened “choiceless
awareness,” how- ever, Bhagwan’s concern over additional “escapes” is said to
have led him to tell his disciples that if anyone else departed in the same manner, he would leave his body
permanently. That, of course, would have been the worst thing that any of his
devoted disciples could have imagined. And no one wants to be the one who
“killed God,” or to have to face that guilt either from his own con- science or
from the community. Thus, the pressures mobilized by that warning, and the fact
that followers needed help in leaving the
isolated area, ensured the “security” of that “prison.” Indeed, according to
Milne (1986), the threat immediately staved off three more already planned
“escapes.”
After all that,
Alexander (2001) summed up the enduring leg-
acy of Zimbardo’s study:
What drives much of the fascination
with the experiment is the sense that any individual could become a brutal
dictator if given the chance....
“These guys
were all peaceniks,” [Zimbardo] recalled of the students chosen to be guards.
“They became like Na- zis”....
“It shows how
easy it is for good people to become perpe- trators of evil.”
Zimbardo’s website, at www.prisonexp.org, presents
a fuller, online photo/video
documentary of that chilling experiment.
* * *
Temporary residents of psychiatric
asylums have observed with discomfort how
easy it was for them to slip into enjoying having all of their decisions
made for them—as to when to eat, bathe, sleep, etc.
It would be
naïve to think that a similar dynamic did not ap- ply to a significant proportion of our world’s
ashram residents. For, they equally have their practical decisions made
by the rules of the community, and their moral and metaphysical ones made by
the guru-figure. With or without profound energy flows and transmit- ted
bliss/enlightenment, that abdication of independence would appeal to far too
many, and provides a very significant additional impediment in attempting to
return to the “real world.” For in the latter, one must make one’s own choices,
and be held responsible for the consequences. In the former, by
contrast, to yield one’s deci- sions
to others is taken as a sign of loyalty and spiritual growth in the loss of
ego, and is correspondingly socially rewarded.
Once you get the rules and the
rituals straight, it’s easy. No decisions, no choices,
nothing to plan. It’s ever so much hard- er to live on your own [than
as a Zen monk] (Boehm, 1996).
Given that all daily needs were
taken care of—food, clothing, living arrangements—there were few decisions left
for a member [of Heaven’s Gate] to make (Lalich,
2004).
Persons can voluntarily elect to
enter a total institution and cease thereafter, to their regret, to be able to
make ... impor- tant decisions. In other cases, notably the religious, inmates
may begin with and sustain a willful desire to be stripped and cleansed of
personal will (Goffman, 1961).
Jetsunma’s telephone number was unlisted and kept private, even from most of her students.
“Otherwise, I’d get calls all day,” she explained later, “people asking me
which cereal to buy” (Sherrill, 2000).
Of course, such
crippling (co-)dependence is a two-way street: Jetsunma, Cohen, Trungpa, and
many others, have all reportedly controlled
the personal lives of their
followers as well.
That gov-
ernance has typically included the
guru-figure setting up, and breaking up, long-term relationships, and
suggesting which cou- ples should have children, etc.
As a loyal
disciple, one is taking the guru-figure’s claims of enlightenment seriously,
and regarding his/her teachings as being the shortest route to the end of one’s
own sorrows in bliss or some other variation of enlightenment. What choice,
then, does one have but to follow such “God-given” advice, regardless of how
obviously meddling and obsessively controlling it may be? What, other than
“ego,” would resist?
If “God” tells
you to do something, you do it, right?
Such devoted
following will further generally and “validly” (in that context) lead you to
immerse yourself in the guru-figure’s teachings, to the natural exclusion of
outside writings or news. In such a scenario, you will probably equally
willingly drop your rela- tionships with family and friends outside the ashram,
if the resis- tance or lack of understanding of those outsiders is felt to
interfere with your spiritual quest. Conversely, they will just as easily drop you, should your new set of beliefs and
activities be too “weird” for them to be comfortable with.
“Call me,” [Pam] said. “I hate to see you fuck up your life in a
place like this.”
“You don’t want
to be a Hare Krishna. Think about it,” Diana added.
Pam sat there,
the radio blaring louder than the ritual music from the temple, and then she
squealed out of the driveway and roared off into the darkness of Watseka. I
watched until the taillights faded. I hoped my friends would come back someday, but feared I’d lost them forever (Muster, 1997).
After making the decision to stay on at
Kripalu, I had settled comfortably into the rhythm of life on campus. My friends
back home had their reactions, of
course. Nina stopped talk- ing to me for a while (Cope,
2000).
Georg
Feuerstein (1992) related his own comparable episodes in entering, and later leaving,
Adi Da’s ashram:
Old friends and colleagues had
reacted to my decision to “drop out” of the academic
world with incomprehension,
some even with hostility. Similarly,
my former fellow disci- ples quite failed to understand why I had to leave [the
ash- ram, five years later]. Some even reacted angrily toward me, and a few
still harbor ill feelings.
If you questioned and decided to
leave [the Moonies], you would not be worthy of love—to the contrary, you would
be worthy of scorn and even hatred (Hassan, 2000).
Or, as Butterfield (1994) summarized the dynamic:
The hypocrisy of [so-called] cult
friendships, typically, is that while they pose as unconditional love, they
depend power- fully on loyalty to the [alleged] cult.
All of that
follows straightforward from the simple conformist principle of “fit in or be
ostracized.” And that is applied just
as much by members of the heterogeneous society outside the ashram gates as it
is applied inside the homogeneously believing “cult.”
The
push to conform was very strong in Heaven’s Gate but in some ways not so different from the
norms of conformity found throughout U.S. society. The specifics of this
confor- mity—ideas, appearance, language, deference to Ti [Nettles] and Do [Applewhite]—may
seem odd to the outsider, but such conformism is rampant everywhere, as
citizens flock to buy the latest fashion or hot product or kowtow to their
bosses. It is the very normalcy of that behavior that made it easy for Ti and
Do’s followers to go along with the program (Lalich,
2004).
* * *
It is just a question of degree or
intensity, not a difference in kind, that separates “safe” communities and
societies from so-called de- structive ones. That is true along a continuum
ranging from high school or the business world to the Marines to prison
confinement to Jonestown. For, any relatively closed, hierarchical system with
an emphasis on respectful obedience to the rules of enlightenment/
parole/graduation/promotion, and insufficient checks and balances placed on the
leaders to make them accountable to the followers and to the outside world, is
a “pathology waiting to happen,” re- gardless of the sexes or ages involved.
Significantly,
then, in a 1975 Psychology Today article,
Zim- bardo and his colleague, Craig Haney, observed that, in many im- portant
ways, “it’s tough to tell a high school from a prison”:
While we do not claim high schools
are really prisons, the two
environments resemble each other to a remarkable and distressing degree Any social institution—a school, hospi-
tal, factory, office—can fairly be
labeled a prison if it seri- ously restricts a person’s freedom, imprisoning
him in regu- lated and routinized modes of behavior or thought.
Zimbardo and
Haney proceeded to sensibly map high school teachers to guards, and students to
prisoners. And had they di- rected their attention to how religious communities
are structured, they would surely have found it worth their while to perform a
comparable mapping for those. They could further
not have been at
all surprised, in hindsight at least, to find that exactly the same problems are reported to occur in our world’s
ashrams as manifest in our prisons, “in spite of” the former having a “god in
the flesh” as a “superintendent,” and
close disciples as “guards.”
Comparably,
even with regard to the relatively safe business world, an anonymous poster on
the SRF Walrus website observed:
It was so awful, working in
corporations. I was a computer programmer, so I saw a lot of the inner workings
at various levels. The first shocking thing
that happens is to be in on an
upper management meeting and see how blatantly anti- employee they are, with no
apologies. But I came to feel that what was worse was the way the employees
bought in to the mistreatment. If you say anything to point out to them how
they’re being used and abused, you become the troublemaker [cf.
Zimbardo’s prisoner #416], the boat-rocker. They are des- perate to believe the
emperor has on the latest and best styl- ings, and this drove me crazy.
That is, the psychological dynamics, as we could have guessed, are no different from those which occur in
so-called cults and pris- ons, even if not approaching the Jonestown end along
that contin- uum. (In such “cult”/prison environments, inmates can again be
sadistically abused, with no regard for their rights, almost as if they were inferior animals
rather than equal human beings.)
Here, we obviously have executives substituted for guards, peon employ-
ees for prisoners, and CEOs for superintendents. The structure
into which those fit, however, is as
hierarchical as in any prison or ashram. It further contains persuasive (financial)
reasons for the underlings to obey their superiors, and equal reasons for them
to not “just leave,” even when being shat upon. So they instead re- main, being
“good employees,” not rocking the boat, in the hope of receiving reward and
recognition/promotion for their obedience to the “much wiser” parent-figure
managerial leaders.
Interestingly,
similar dynamics can apply even in the smallest of “communities”:
The social convention of marriage
... becomes for many cou- ples a state of imprisonment in which one partner
agrees to become prisoner or guard, forcing or allowing the other to play the
reciprocal role (Zimbardo, et al., 1973).
Focusing on
“patriarchy” as opposed to “hierarchy” in any of those systems, however, only
serves to obscure the relevant issues of basic human psychology. It further
typically leads to utterly fal- lacious, frequently misandristic (as opposed to
misogynistic) pro- posed “solutions” to the reported problems we have seen
herein.
* * *
Even a pure democracy will naturally
and inevitably turn into an authoritarian hierarchy in the face of any one
person whom enough people believe to
be an infallible “god.” Those supporters then defer to his (or her)
“omniscient” perception of reality, and collectively enforce that same
deference on their peers, against the penalty of ostracism from the community—a
fate worse than peon- ship, even were salvation not at stake. Thereby do they
ingratiate themselves and secure their own inner circle status, where they can
“bask in the reflected glory” from such close proximity to the “cool sage”
above them. In the same positions, they will further re- ceive bowing respect
from those below—exacted sadistically, if need
be.
(With regard to
the spontaneous production and defense of the guru position: Compare the unavoidable—not necessarily good, but
unavoidable—presence of “alpha males” and pecking orders even in the animal kingdom. There is neither
“patriarchy” nor “too much linear
thinking” in such pre-verbal environments; yet the hierarchical orderings occur
all the same.)
Spiritual paths
as diverse as Roman Catholicism, Tibetan Buddhism and Paramahansa Yogananda’s
SRF have been grown in cultures
ranging from the agrarian East to postmodern America. Yet, they are scarcely distinguishable in their power
structures, the behaviors of their
members, the penalties for leaving and the reported, spirit-crushing cruelties
visited upon those who stay. And
given all that, it seems clear by now that not only are the problems with such
communities systemic, but the abuse-creating structures themselves are
basically unavoidable.
The issues
we have seen, then, are the product
far less of a few “bad apples,” than of the
surroundings in which they are con- tained.
Prisons [and other authoritarian
institutions, e.g., ashrams], where the balance of power is so unequal, tend to
be brutal and abusive places unless great effort is made to control the guards’
base impulses, [Zimbardo] said. At Stanford and in Iraq [e.g., Abu Ghraib], he
added: “It’s not that we put bad apples in a good barrel. We put good apples in
a bad barrel. The barrel corrupts anything that it touches” (J. Schwartz, 2004).
In Abu Ghraib,
“guards were allowed to do what they needed to keep ‘order and justice’ inside
the prison”—an instruction which is obviously wholly comparable to that given
to Zimbardo’s guards.
David Clohessy,
the national director of S.N.A.P. (the Survi- vors Network of those Abused by
Priests), gave a similar analysis of the Catholic Church,
in its problems with clergy
sexual abuse (in Bruni and
Burkett, 2002):
It’s not bad apples. It’s the
structure of the barrel that the apples are in, and it’s the people who are in
charge of the barrel, and the people who fill up the barrel
[i.e., the bishops, cardinals and pope].
Almost
universally, in spiritual communities, there are no meaningful checks and
balances on the behaviors of the leaders, to restrict their exercise of
“divine” power. That is so, not only in terms
of their indulgence in base (e.g., sadistic or sexual) impulses, but also in failing to prevent the Animal Farm-like rewriting
of the tenets on which the
community was originally founded. (Compare SRF’s current monopoly on “valid” kriya initiation, etc.) Yet, there
is simultaneously no shortage of
indoctrination, required defer- ence, ostracism and worse, utilized to keep the
followers from even cognizing, much less speaking up about, those power-grabs
and rule-changes. And before you know it, the Board of Directors mem- bers, for
example, have become “more equal” than the people to whom they should be
accountable. They will further benefit from there being no shortage of peons
eager to prove their loyalty to the cause, and work their way up “toward God,”
by doubly reinforcing that inequality on anyone who dares to question it.
Profound
deference in such spiritual communities will further occur even if all below
the “alpha sage” believe that they them- selves can eventually attain to his or her ostensibly exalted level of wisdom
or spiritual realization. For, no small part of the means toward attaining that
enlightened wisdom is to “temporarily” defer
to its manifestation in the guru-figure. Conversely, to question “God’s” wisdom
is to suffer one form or another of damnation with- in the community, just as
to obey him unquestioningly is to secure one’s own salvation.
There is in the Indian tradition the notion that ...
“criticizing the guru” is a thing that the disciples must not tolerate; and
they don’t (Bharati, 1976; italics added).
Whatever you do should be done only
to please the guru. Without the guru, enlightenment is impossible (Butterfield, 1994).
You have to do everything your guru
says. You must obey (Neem Karoli Baba, in [Das,
1997]).
[Ramakrishna] once admonished an
unsuspecting young man who refused to
wash the Master’s feet after the latter’s toilet: “If I piss standing, you
buggers have to do it dancing around. You must do my bidding for your own good”
(Sil, 1998).
In the relevant
words of Upasani Baba (1978)—a disciple of the
original Shirdi Sai Baba—who was himself married,
by ancient Vedic custom, to a
full twenty-five virgin girls:
[I]t is never the business of the
devotee to doubt or interpret in his
own way whatever he is spoken to by the Satpurusha [God-realized man]. He cannot
understand the real purport
ers:
of Sadguru’s [i.e., the true
teacher’s] talk or action; because his reasoning and thought are never capable
of fathoming Guru’s thoughts or actions.
Or, as Adi Da (1974) conveniently explained to his own follow-
If you assume the Guru is less than
[living always and con- sciously in Divine Communion], if you assume what he
says is less than Truth, that he is other than the Divine, that he does not
live in God in exactly the way that he is asking you to live in God, then you
are not living in Satsang with such a one, and you are not doing this sadhana.
Or recall Andrew Cohen’s
reported promise to his disciples:
“Anyone who loves me ... is guaranteed enlightenment.” But how is such love shown, if not through quick
and willing obedience? Could someone who “loved” him still
openly question, much less disobey? Not if we are to believe the reports from
his former disciples:
Whoever shows himself to be a loyal
student is his friend. Those who are
disloyal or unreliable fall out of
favor (van der Braak, 2003).
Comparably, from the Tibetan
Buddhist tradition, we have
this dangerous counsel:
A
courageous disciple, armored
with the determination never to displease his teacher even at the cost of his life, so stable- minded that he is never shaken
by immediate circumstances, who serves his teacher
without caring for his own health or survival and obeys his every command
without sparing him- self at all—such a person will be liberated simply through his devotion (Rinpoche,
1998; italics added).
Guru-devotion involves both your
thoughts and actions. The most important thing is to develop the total
conviction that your Guru is a Buddha.... If you doubt your Guru’s compe- tence
and ability to guide you, your practices will be ex- tremely unstable and you
will be unable to make any con- crete progress....
If your Guru
acts in a seemingly unenlightened manner and you feel it would be hypocritical
to think him a Buddha, you should remember
that your own opinions are unreliable
and the apparent faults you see may
only be a reflection of your own deluded
state of mind. Also you should think that if your
Guru acted in a completely perfect manner, he would be inaccessible and you would be unable
to relate to him. It is therefore out of
your Guru’s great compassion that he may show apparent flaws. This is part
of his use of skillful means in order for him to be able to teach you. He is mirroring your own faults (Beru
Kyhentze Rinpoche, in [Berzin, 1978]; ital- ics added).
Once a person has been identified [in India] as a saint,
a holy man, nothing he does
or does not do can change his title, unless he is caught in flagrante, and several times, engaged in disastrous things like
sex or forbidden drink. But even in such a case, once his charisma is firmly
established, there is a dialectic out of such dilemma: the emancipated person
is not bound by social rules, and there is enough scripture to support it
(Bharati, 1976).
All of that, of course, is simply manipulative, power-preserving nonsense, presented in the guise of
spirituality. And it all, as we have seen, exists just as surely in the
traditional, agrarian East as in the postmodern West, by its own admission.
The
indefensibly stupid notion that the “real difficulty of ‘the strange case of
Adi Da’ is that the guru principle is neither under- stood nor accepted by our
culture” is clearly part of the same dan- gerous apologetic. For, it is again
obvious that whenever “God” is involved, there are no checks and balances: “God” can always do whatever he wants,
regardless of the surrounding culture or tradi- tion.
In the face of
such traditional instruction, points such as the following, from the Dalai Lama
no less, ring utterly hollow:
Part of the blame lies with the
student, because too much obedience, devotion, and blind acceptance spoils a
teacher.... Part also lies with the spiritual master because he lacks the
integrity to be immune to that kind of vulnerability (in But- ler, 1990).
Of course, by
parity of argument, one would equally place “part
of the blame” on abused women for giving up their power to men, or ridiculously regard too-obedient children
as “spoiling” their parents, etc.
Much more sensibly:
The guru system, the Zen Master
system and every other variation on that theme is just as horrible and
destructive to folks with amber skin and almond shaped eyes as it is to folks
with white skin and blue eyes. It didn’t work two thou- sand years ago in
Rishikesh, India any better than it works right now in Racine, Wisconsin (Warner, 2004).
Charaka, the first-century court
physician whose writings help form the basis of ancient Indian medicine, wrote
that a student was free to ignore a guru’s orders if they jeopardized health or
were against the law. One suspects, though, that it would have been difficult
for a student so trained in obedi- ence to decide when the time for rebellion
had come (Brent, 1972).
* * *
Even if the guru-figure was ever all
that he claimed to be, it would take at most a few years for an inner circle of
“guards” to accumu- late around him or her. Those high-ranking followers will
then work roughly within the overall constraints set by the guru/super-
intendent and immediate culture. They themselves are always looking up to the
guru-figure with respect, being at times harshly disciplined by him, and
feeling always inferior to him. They will thus exact their own craved measures
of respect, obedience and superiority, to re-inflate their own self-esteem,
from the only source available, i.e.,
from those below them in the closed commu- nity. And the obedience of the
latter can only be unconditional, with no threat of rebellion, when their wills are completely broken.
(Absolute power in any context is mutually exclusive with a toler- ance for
discontent. For, it is exactly the vocalization and acting- out of such
dissatisfaction that would show the governing power to be less than absolute.)
People compensate for their
subservience to superiors by ex- ploiting inferiors. They feel entitled (Mike
Lew, in [Bruni and
Burkett, 2002]).
Or, as Goffman noted in his (1961) study of totalistic institu- tions, Asylums:
[W]ith the decision that [military]
officer training camp has “earned” him rights over enlisted men, the officer
trainee be- comes an officer. The pain suffered in camp can be used as a
justification for the pleasures of command.
As to those
“pleasures of command” in the exercise of domi- nance over others, Zimbardo (1971) further observed:
[W]e are all subject at some level
to being corrupted by pow- er. It may be as children we start off with an
unfair power disadvantage where adults tell us [as gurus similarly do lat- er]
what to do and we have to do it. Maybe at some level we are seeking to redress
that imbalance.
Toward that
same wish for redress, in proportion to the ex- perienced imbalance, Haney and
Zimbardo (1998) noted:
[A]s the experiment progressed, more
[prisoners] frequently expressed intentions to do harm to others (even as they
be- came increasingly more docile and conforming to the whims of the guards).
When it comes
to (bowing) respect, then, it seems that the more we give, the more we crave to
get in return—easily slipping into even the sadistic abuse of others in order to
secure that.
Of course, in
spiritual contexts and elsewhere, the rabid intol- erance for disobedience,
disrespect and disloyalty in others, and consequent punishment for that, could also be seen as having
addi- tional psychological origins. Indeed, one might well take it as in-
volving a projection of one’s own unallowed feelings of disloyalty and wishes
for disobedience onto them. That is, since one is not permitted to acknowledge
disloyalty or disobedience in oneself, one instead sees and punishes it doubly
in others.
The guards
in Zimbardo’s study
had further been instructed to maintain order in the prison by an
authority-figure. Thus, it is also quite possible that a significant
part of their behaviors might be traced to attempts at winning the approval of
that authority. If they were going to do their jobs well in the eyes of their
own boss- es, after all, they could brook no discontent or disrespect from the prisoners.
The extracting
of respect and obedience, in any case, will be done via whatever means of
psychological and physical manipula- tion and abuse the upper echelon can get away with. And that will
again be done under pretenses (in
religious communities) of “kill- ing the egos” of others for their own
spiritual benefit. Further, it will be enacted within a group mentality (at all
levels of the hier- archy) where to resist what your “elders”
are telling you is to invite
ostracism from the rest of the community.
* * *
In Zimbardo’s study, the early
rebellion of the prisoners both cre- ated a solidarity among the guards, and
reinforced the awareness of the latter that they might actually be in danger. I
know of no ashram that has ever had such an acute, concerted rebellion— Kripalu
at the end of Desai’s rule perhaps comes closest. Nor are the guru-figure or
his inner circle ever in any
physical danger from their followers. Yet they reportedly behave sadistically
all the same, with no more tolerance for disobedience or disloyalty than
Zimbardo’s guards exhibited. That is, the “steady state” of the en- vironment
is remarkably similar even if, in the absence of acute transients, it may have
taken longer to get there. (It took all of a few days in Zimbardo’s prison
study, even though both the guard and prisoner participants in it were
perfectly normal and healthy individuals going into that.)
Nor would even
a genuine “perfect master” (if there were such a thing, which there absolutely
is not) at the head of such a com- munity be able to avoid those problems. For,
as much as disciples may transfer their own hopes for perfection onto the guru,
no such perfection was ever ascribed to Zimbardo or to his guards. Nor did he
or his guards promulgate any “weird” system of beliefs. Nor were those guards
intending, at the start, to enact any means of “mind control.”
Yet, in spite
of those innocent beginnings, Zimbardo’s guards actually ended up effecting
sleep deprivation and controlling even the bathroom activities and food intake of their prisoners,
attempt- ing force-feeding on at least one occasion.
Comparably:
I wasn’t long in the [Irish Sisters
of Charity orphanage] and there was a piece of parsnip in my dinner, and it was
dirty. I politely put it to one side of my plate, and ate everything else. The nun came down and told me to eat
the parsnip. I said no. So she force
fed it to me, and I got sick. Then she
force fed that to me as well. And she started to beat me with her
belt (Raftery and O’Sullivan, 2001).
Note, then, how
the sadistic behavior is exactly the same whether coming from women or from
men. That is, the fact that all of Zimbardo’s guards and prisoners were male is
not, in practice, relevant. (The mixture of the sexes in Abu Ghraib likewise
did not prevent female guards there from allegedly being among the worst
abusers of power.)
Zimbardo’s
“bad” guards enacted their sadistic and controlling behaviors not for having
been told to do so by him. Rather, they evolved those means of control on their
own. That is, like the Irish nuns above, they behaved thusly not because they
were directly told to by an authority figure, but rather just because they were
allowed to.
Consider
further that in Zimbardo’s study, the power was di- vided up more or less
evenly among the guards. Had Zimbardo not been there at all (as superintendent),
one can easily see that the division of power among the guards would have been
just as equal. Yet things could only have gotten worse, faster. The point,
then, is that a group of people with
absolute or near-absolute authority is no better than is a single individual
with the same power.
Nor would such
a group act to enforce “checks and balances”
on each other at their own level. For, Zimbardo’s “good” guards, rather
than constraining the activities of their “bad” counterparts, simply felt helpless in watching the sadistic behaviors
of the latter. How are we to understand why otherwise-reasonable and healthy
men would behave so impotently? First, we may note that it is typical of human
behavior that, in witnessing any objection- able
activity from within a group of comparable onlookers, we as- sume that “someone else” will speak
up or call the police,
if that needs to be done.
Indeed, it has actually been shown in controlled studies that we are less
likely to intervene if we are surrounded by a group of others than as a sole witness to a crime or emergency (Cialdini
[2001]; Zimbardo [2004b]). For, we will naturally take our
cues from their outwardly calm, evaluating behaviors,
as they take
their cues from ours.
As one relevant
example of such covert evaluation and subse- quent going along with the group,
consider the reaction of the guest
reporting Ken Wilber’s alleged public miming of masturba- tion and frequent,
sophomoric requests there for blowjobs:
I laughed with everyone else, but at
the back of my mind, I realized I was disturbed and disappointed by it. But other
people I talked to weren’t bothered
by it at all, so maybe he just gauged his audience correctly (in Integral, 2004).
In asking other
subjects about whether they were bothered by such behaviors, though, one is
effectively inquiring: “Were you dis- turbed by our emperor’s new clothes?” The
obvious answer to which is, “No, of
course not.”
Regardless,
having spent sufficient time in silence within a group of onlookers, the first
question one would face should one finally openly object would be the
embarrassing: Why did you keep quiet for so long, if it was obvious from the
beginning that some- thing needed to be done? We
therefore have a personal
stake in not admitting that we
should have done things differently—i.e., that we were wrong to behave thusly.
For that reason, and even merely for the sake of socially rewarded consistency,
we instead remain silent, allowing the problems to continue. (Institutions such
as the Vatican persist in their errors and reported
abuses in no small part exactly for being unable
to come out and admit
that they have been
wrong in the past [cf. Wills, 2000].) Plus, for Zimbardo’s relatively sensitive
“good” guards, for example, to speak out against the ac- tivities of their more
sadistic counterparts would surely have re- sulted in their quick ostracism
from that sub-community of “alpha guards,” who actually enjoyed mistreating their prisoners.
Everyone and everything in the prison was defined
by power. To be a guard who
did not take advantage of this institution- ally sanctioned use of power was to
appear “weak,” “out of it,” “wired up
by the prisoners,” or simply a deviant from the established norms of
appropriate guard behavior (Zimbardo, et al., 1973).
In evaluating
the actions of their guards, Zimbardo and his colleagues further noted:
[T]he behavior of [the] good guards
seemed more motivated by a desire to be liked by everyone in the system than by
a concern for the inmates’ welfare.
Guards who thus
want to be “liked by everyone,” however,
will not only do small favors for the prisoners and avoid punishing them, but will equally
shrink from offending
their own peers.
Thus, they will again avoid speaking
out against the abuses of the latter. (As Zimbardo [1971]
himself further noted, allowing those “bad” guards free reign also makes one
look “good” by comparison. That is, it casts one’s own ego in a positive light,
and allows one to feel like a better person in that contrast.)
Whatever the
theory behind the ensuing silence may be, though—in broad strokes or in
nuances—in practice it is a perva- sive feature of human societies, both
secular and “sacred”:
It is evident from the testimony of
former inmates that by no means all
of [the Irish Catholic nuns and monastic brothers] behaved brutally towards the
children. But it is a common theme that the “good” nuns and brothers never
interfered with or protested about the activities of their more violent
colleagues (Raftery and O’Sullivan, 2001).
Zimbardo has more recently (2004a) concluded:
My research and that of my
colleagues has cataloged the conditions for stirring the crucible of human
nature in nega- tive directions. Some of the necessary ingredients are ... by-
standers who do not intervene, and a setting of power differ- entials.
“Bystanders who do not intervene”: e.g., “good” monks who
wonder out loud why their peers and superiors are not behaving with integrity, but who do nothing to stop it. For, to speak up would make them “bad disciples” and
open them to retaliation/os- tracism from those
tougher ones on the same level and above them. “A
setting of power differentials”: e.g., guru-figure, inner cir-
cle, and peon/newbie disciples.
* * *
No amount of flaws shown by the
spiritual teacher will dissuade the truly sincere seeker from becoming involved
and deferential. Not, at least, if he places enlightenment/salvation as a high enough goal in his own life, and believes
that the holy figure in question can help him get to that state faster
than any other route.
Thus, as Butterfield (1994) noted in the
context of his own initia- tion into Trungpa’s path, with the latter having
given that Vajra- yana transmission via a rambling, nearly nonsensical, stream-of-
consciousness delivery:
He could have said very little to
dissuade me, as long as I remained convinced that he knew what I wanted to
learn.
Ponder that
point deeply, for it means that the utilization of “deceptive recruiting” as a
means of defining what a potentially destructive group is, is far less relevant
than one might imagine it to be. For, even without such deception, one may well
truly believe (on the basis of “genius” recommendations
and the like) that one or another guru-figure is a “great
Realizer,” and that he can lead you to the same exalted state if you just
“surrender completely” to him. And in that case, you will put up with any
amount of “Rude Boy” mistreatment in that relationship, and consider it to be
for your own benefit, even if you have
been warned about it beforehand.
Even just in
normal human relationships, if someone has something we want—sex, money,
etc.—we will tolerate a great deal of grief
and mistreatment in order
to get it. And being
told up- front that the other
person is “trouble,” or that we will be asked to compromise our principles in
the process, won’t stop us from going willing into that, if we just want the
“prize” badly enough.
So, how badly
do you want enlightenment?
The guru claimed to offer access to
profoundly ecstatic spiri- tual realization, and the only way to gain access to
that ex- perience was by playing his game. The better you played the game, by
showing your devotion and obedience, the greater your contact with the guru and
the more frequent your op- portunities for grace (Lowe,
1996).
Interestingly,
the Daists have reportedly (Lowe, 1996) at-
tempted to get the “disappointingly” tame Garbage
and the God- dess out of circulation. Likewise, when an exposé of the
“Merwin incident” was published in their local Boulder Monthly, Trungpa’s followers apparently “scurried about
town, trying to keep the mag- azine off the racks by purchasing several copies
at a time” (Schu- macher, 1992). Books uncomplimentary toward so-called cults
also tend to vanish mysteriously from public libraries. My local city ref-
erence library, for example—which allows no books to be taken out
—is nevertheless missing its sole
copy of David Lane’s (1994) Ex- posing
Cults. That book itself is notably critical of Da Free John, among numerous
other “lesser lights/coronas.”
Such reported
attempts at covering
up questionable behaviors, however, are fairly superfluous. For, the spiritual
world is more
than screwed up enough for its
leading figures to still explicitly encourage you to go along for the
“adventure,” even years after the reported methods of “Teaching” have been
widely publicized.
And, if you
can’t take the “Rude Boy” discipline, whose fault/ ego is that?
Remember: “The greater
the offense, the bigger the ego.”
Put another
way: The expert
reassurance of a highly respected hero or “genius” that being
disciplined by a God-realized “Rude Boy” is the fastest way toward one’s own
most-valued realization (or salvation) will easily override any concerns one
might have about even a reportedly “problematic” group. It is, after all, very
easy to rationalize away the complaints of disaffected former fol- lowers as being mere “whining” or “cowardice” on the part of people who “couldn’t take the heat,” etc.
That is so even if the group is prone to literally beating the crap out of its
followers, as we have seen. In such a case, the purportedly destructive group
could even fully disclose all of its past alleged
abuses and plans for future
mis- treatment to potential members, and new lemmings would still flock
to join. (Recall how Zen monks will allow themselves to be literally beaten
black and blue just to get into the
monastery. That is, they go into that environment knowing full well that it is
a vio- lently abusive one. They have further in no way been “deceptively
recruited” into that.)
In such a realistic scenario, then, seekers absolutely would
not merely find themselves involuntarily “recruited” into reportedly
destructive groups by any deceptive means. Rather, they would explicitly go
looking for those. They sought out Rajneesh’s violent humanistic encounter
sessions, too, presumably frequently on the recommendations of people they
admired, as opposed to going into them without knowing what would likely occur
in those groups. Likewise, Yogi Bhajan’s
(1977) explicit, printed statement that dis- ciples might be required to steal on behalf of the guru (e.g., Bhajan himself) was evidently
not sufficient to scare off his own reported quarter of a million followers.
[A]
lmost everyone [in Da’s community], without exception, was subjected to a number of [alleged] mind-control methods,
including non-stop indoctrination, intense overwork, sleep- denial, constant
peer pressure and a barrage of demands, to the point where they were
effectively robbed of judgment.
People accepted
this mistreatment because ... they be- lieved the promise that it would break
down their “resis- tance” to God in the person of the Guru. People accepted
that their “egos” needed to be disciplined and “destroyed,” so that the
same “spiritual genius” the Guru claimed would awaken in them (Elias, 1999a).
The full extent
of the behind-the-scenes dysfunctionality in
any religious organization is, of course, never explained to its pro-
spective members up front. (Likewise, it is never disclosed at the beginning of
any job or human relationship, nor could one rea- sonably expect it to be.)
Still, if there is “deception” in our world’s “authentic, transformative”
spiritual organizations, it is more in the guru-figures not living up to their
own teachings, or not pos- sessing the spiritual realization which they claim
to have—an en- tirely separate issue. It has little to do with potential
followers supposedly not knowing that they would be subjected to extreme
“discipline,” or required to break the law at the guru-figure’s in- struction,
with the reward of eventually becoming “as great as the guru” themselves.
And, having
gone willingly into that “heat,” devotees have no easy way out, to save
spiritual face. They will therefore soon find themselves bearing the reported
abuse willingly and silently, as a purported
sign of spiritual development/loyalty/obedience. Further, that will be done in the implicit
hope that if they are thus “loyal” and obedient enough, for long enough, the
mistreatment will stop, and they will receive nothing but love.
That futile
strategy of coping, however, is one which they
share with battered wives. Indeed, the latter, like the former disci-
ples, frequently feel unable to leave their abusive spouses in large part for
having had their own egos destroyed by being told repeat- edly, in one form or
another, that they are worthless and incapa- ble. They then behave accordingly,
with all due expected helpless- ness.
[B]
attered women are notoriously loyal to their abusers, and often
cling desperately to the hope that everything will change and come out for the
best. A primary task of battered woman shelters and support groups is to break
through this denial and help the woman face the fact that the abuser is in fact
doing what he is doing. From there, recovery is possible.
The same
psychological mechanisms that create loyalty in a battered woman [e.g., by
making her “complicit in her own exploitation”—in helplessness and
otherwise—from which she “becomes
supportive of the exploiter”], deliberately instilled, can make a
[so-called] cult victim loyal to the [al- leged] cult (Bob Penny, in [Wakefield, 1991]).
It is well
known, further, that certain people will knowingly enter into secular sadomasochistic relationships for “getting
off” on that pain or humiliation—having psychologically associated it with
receiving love. In a like manner, spiritual seekers with sufficiently skewed
views of enlightenment, associating pain or extreme disci- pline/humiliation
with realization and spirituality, will only be at- tracted, not repelled, by
the idea of being abused “for their own good”
by a realized “god.” (Compare
even the “suffering as a path to
salvation” perspectives of the likes of Thérèse of Lisieux—de- scribed by Pius
X as “the greatest saint of modern times”—and Mother Teresa in the Catholic
Church. Indeed, for a revealing analysis of the probable psychological factors
underlying the reli- gious fervor, and eager embrace of suffering and
humiliation on the part of the former
“Little Flower,” see Monica Furlong’s [1987] Thérèse of Lisieux.)
The ability to
put one’s own conscience aside and do whatever the guru asks you to is further
believed to be essential to God- realization (with that being gained only
through the grace of the guru). One might well then even seek out guru-figures
who are known to be “amoral.” For, what is morality but a product of the same
conceptualization which daily blinds us to the Way Things Are? Isn’t breaking
such arbitrary hang-ups exactly what we need to do if we wish to be free of our
dualistic conceptual boundaries? So, a “wild and crazy” guru who will “wisely”
place you into situa- tions where you have no choice but to drop your
categorizing intel- lect and culturally molded conscience in “choiceless
awareness” would be the best for accelerating your own spiritual evolution,
yes? You could further hardly ask up-front for a detailed list of what you
might be asked to do in such a community, as that would spoil the spontaneity
of the guru’s “divine expression,” would it not?
There is
further, quite clearly, no alleged abuse or breach of conventional morality so
gross that it cannot be rationalized away, even by persons outside of the
residential group. That is so, par- ticularly
for those who desperately want to believe
that one or an-
other guru-figure is the “greatest
living Realizer” or the like, and that everything he or she does is a
“Teaching.” And, one need not be “brainwashed” in order to think that such
rationalizations “make sense.” Rather, one needs only to sincerely believe in
the long-touted, if utterly wonky, transpersonal theory.
The voluntary
entrance into known (reported) psychologically/ physically abusive and amoral
environments will then quite natu- rally follow. For, how else can one prove one’s “spiritual
machismo” to the heroes who have recommended “complete surrender” to one or
another even-“problematic” guru and environment? How else to show that you’re
serious about becoming as “enlightened” as they are in their spiritual genius,
except by “taking the heat”?
Interestingly,
Live singer/songwriter Eddie Kowalczyk has ex- pressed his early appreciation for Wilber’s
(1996) A Brief History of Everything. He later
visited with Wilber
himself in August
of 1999. Kowalczyk then blurbed for Da in 2000,
crediting him with being “Real God ... incarnate as Avatar Adi Da Samraj.”
Coincidence? Or
a troubling demonstration of the points above,
even with Kowalczyk meeting Da as a “celebrity” either way, and thus necessarily having no real knowledge as to what
the “Avatar” and his reportedly dildo-wielding, corona-seeing “pod peo- ple”
are really like?
* * *
Zimbardo again took two dozen
completely normal, physically and mentally healthy college-age individuals. He
then confined them, willingly and voluntarily, to a closed environment;
stratified the community into guards and prisoners; and simply instructed the
higher-ups to exact obedience and respect from the lower ones. He further
introduced no charismatic leadership, weird beliefs or claims to divinity on
his own part. There was even no
punishment for leaving, other than the loss of the money the prisoners were
to be paid for their full-term
participation in the study, and their
own subjective feelings of being “bad prisoners” in prematurely exiting.
Yet, in less than six days, and quite unintentionally, he created behaviors
among the various classes of participants which are in- distinguishable from
those allegedly found in—as a very reason- able extrapolation from the known,
reported data—every ashram and every so-called cult.
It is thus not
the charisma or “divine” status per se of
any leader which creates problems. Rather, the “problematic” nature is
again inherent in the power
structure of every closed hierarchical community, when that stratification is combined with basic human psychology. Having an “infallible
god-man” rather than a merely human superintendent at the helm will make it
harder for others to disobey or to leave, but even without that, disobedience
and de- parture will in no way be easy to enact.
Conversely,
each one of us is again susceptible to exhibiting docile “cult-follower”
behavior in the right/wrong circumstances. Tendencies toward conformity,
authoritarianism or blind belief may make it statistically more likely for any
given person to be thus fooled, but truly, it could happen to any one of us.
People believe that “it can never
happen to them” because they want to believe they are stronger and better than
the millions who have fallen victim to [alleged] cult mind con- trol....
A [so-called]
cult will generally target the most educat- ed, active, and capable people it
can find. I hear comments such as “I never knew there were so many brilliant
people in these types of groups” (Hassan, 1990).
Such beliefs as, “others could be
made to do that but not me” and “others could be swayed by speeches but not me”
are dangerous because they set us apart from other people who are like ourselves and therefore prevent
us from learning from their experience what may be valuable for ourselves
(Winn, 2000).
[O]ur experiences [with the Moonies]
could happen to any American family (Underwood and Underwood, 1979).
[E]ven people who said, “I could
never join a cult,” would walk in [to Rajneesh’s ashrams] as if on a dare and
emerge no different from a person
who had entered
as an eager seek- er....
Bhagwan
emphatically stated that what we were in- volved in was not a religion, and this appealed to people who would be the first
to decry anyone who joined a “cult.” As a matter of fact we joined a cult
precisely because it wasn’t a cult
(Strelley, 1987).
*
* *
Significantly, it was only when an
“outsider” objected to the behav- iors occurring within Zimbardo’s study that
it was stopped. (That came, however, only after fifty other outside observers had them- selves voiced no shock or
negative opinion.) Having not previously been involved with the experiment in
any capacity, she had thus not participated step-by-step in the “slow descent
into madness,” instead walking straight into it, unprepared, on the sixth day (Zimbardo, et al., 2000).
That, of
course, reminds one eerily of the old experiment/story of the frog placed into
water in a saucepan on a stove, with that water then being slowly heated.
Lacking any sudden increase in temperature to alert him that all is not well,
the frog will allow himself to be slowly cooked, rather than simply jumping out
of the water to safety.
A comparable
“slow descent,” invisible to those who partici- pate in it step-by-step on a
daily basis, occurs in our world’s ash- rams.
Indeed, even new members in an already
“mad” environment will have
that introduction cushioned by having the most ques- tionable aspects of the
organization hidden from them until they have demonstrated their loyalty. To find
out, first-hand, how bad things really are, then, one must already be “halfway
cooked” one- self, via that slow increase in heat.
Consider,
further, Stanley Milgram’s (1974) obedience experi- ments. There, a majority
(nearly two-thirds, in one experimental version) of ordinary people were
induced, in less than an hour, to administer what they thought were potentially
lethal shocks to even hysterically protesting others, simply out of their
obedience to the minimal
authority of an experimenter.
The
most significant aspect
of [Milgram’s] experiment is that not one
participant refuses to continue when the planted subject first asks them to stop. It is only later, with a threat of death
or grave illness, that people refuse to go on with the shocks. It is always and
only the scream that is heeded, and never its antecedent, never the beginnings
or first hints of pain [i.e., never the first sensings of the “slow, continual
in- crease in heat”]....
One sees the
same thing at work in [so-called] cults: a refusal to recognize in early
excesses, early signs, the full implications of what is going on and will
follow later. Relin- quishing step by step the individualities of conscience,
fol- lowers are slowly accustomed to one stage of [reported] abuse
after another, becoming
so respectful of the authority
that they never quite manage to rebel (Marin, 1995).
Both of those
frightening experimental demonstrations (of Zimbardo and Milgram) arise simply
from basic human situational psychology, present as much outside our world’s
ashrams as inside them.
One could,
indeed, substitute respect-hungering inner-circle monks for guards, gurus for
superintendents, and younger monks for prisoners, repeating Zimbardo’s study in any of our world’s
ash- rams, and the results of the experiment would surely not change at all. Likewise, one might substitute
elder monks for dial-turning shockers, younger monks for shockee subjects, and
gurus for lab- coated experimenters, willing to accept responsibility for the
re- sults of the shocks, even unto death/enlightenment. In that case, one would no doubt find the vast majority
of “holy, peaceful” monks and nuns just “doing what they were told” in that context,
regard- less of the consequences to the physical or mental health of their
shocked subjects.
Milgram’s
subjects were not behaving sadistically in raising the voltage with which they
shocked their learners, as he showed in
additional experiments. They equally, however, were not at- tempting to exact
obedience or respect from the people they were shocking. The difference in both
motivation and behavior there is thus quite understandable. For, there is
clearly quite a significant contrast in mindset between trying to help someone
learn, even as a semi-teacher—the “cover story” for Milgram’s obedience experi-
ments—versus explicitly attempting to exact respect and uncondi- tional obedience
from them.
It further goes
without saying that gurus and their close disci- ples would not react any more
favorably to attempts to “reform” them than Zimbardo’s guards could possibly
have welcomed that, had the prisoners tried to improve that environment to
curtail the sadistic abuse to which they were being subjected, for example.
(Compare the one “troublemaker,” #416.) Indeed, most of those guards—willingly
working overtime, for no extra pay—were upset
when the study was prematurely ended, in contrast to the prison- ers, who
were glad it was over. That is, the guards’ sadistic behav- iors were in no way
caused or amplified by them hypothetically “not
wanting to be there” and taking that frustration out on the prisoners, or the
like.
There has been much speculation in
recent times that per- haps so many of the nuns [running Irish Catholic
institu- tional schools] were cruel to the children in their care be- cause
they themselves were frustrated, having possibly even been forced to enter a
convent by their families. There is no evidence to support this view. In fact,
quite the reverse (Raftery and O’Sullivan, 2001).
All of that is
hardly surprising, though. For, as every “Rude Boy” and sadistic guard knows, killing
other people’s egos or break- ing their wills via humiliation, or “beating the crap out of them” for
their own good, is such fun. With
power being such an aphrodisiac, who would want to give up that complete
control over another per- son’s life? (See Zimbardo, et al. [1973]; Haney, et al. [1973].)
* * *
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, too, offers valuable
insights into the dynamics of closed, authoritarian societies. And interest-
ingly, when a movie version of that book was being filmed, the problem which
the director encountered was not in getting the child actors into character
while the cameras were rolling. Rather, the difficulty was in getting them out of character when the shoot- ing was
stopped. As Peter Brook explained (in Askenasy, 1978):
Many of their off-screen
relationships completely paralleled the story, and one of our main problems was
to encourage them to be uninhibited within the shots but disciplined in between them. My experience showed me that the only fal-
sification in Golding’s fable is the
length of time the descent to savagery takes. His action takes about three
months. I be- lieve that if the cork of continued adult presence [i.e., of ex-
ternal checks and balances on the group’s leaders] were re- moved from the
bottle, the complete catastrophe could occur within a long weekend.
One may, of
course, validly compare that with the role-playing in Zimbardo’s study—and in
each of our real lives—which quickly ceases to be just a conscious “role.” And
as far as “long weekends” go: The degeneration of character in the simulated
Stanford prison happened literally within three days.
In Dittmann (2003), Zimbardo further traces the parallels be-
tween the mind-control methods and behaviors utilized by George
Orwell’s fictional totalitarian
state in 1984, and Jonestown. Chris-
topher Browning, in his (1998) Ordinary Men, performs a compa- rable
mapping for the similarities between Zimbardo’s and Mil- gram’s studies, and
the Final Solution in Poland. Significantly, the percentage of “cruel and
tough,” “tough but fair,” and “good” sol- diers, respectively, in that
Solution, “bears an uncanny resem- blance” to the comparable split among the
guards in Zimbardo’s simulated prison.
[U]nder conditions of terror most
people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson
of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that “it could
hap- pen” in most places but it did not
happen everywhere....
The trouble
with Eichmann was precisely that so many were
like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and
terrify- ingly normal (Arendt, 1992).
* * *
All of the subjects in Zimbardo’s
prison study were men. In prac- tice, however, any minor bias which the study’s
male-only nature might introduce, as to the exact percentage of guards who
turned “bad” and abused their power, or of the specific ways in which they
abused that power, or of the percentage of prisoners who broke down emotionally,
in no way lessens the applicability of the gen- eral mapping to “all humans.”
The mixture of
the sexes in Abu Ghraib again did not prevent female guards there from being among
the worst alleged
abusers of power. Nor did it
stop nuns from force-feeding other nuns else- where, etc. That is, where
comparable “experiments” to Zimbardo’s have been performed in the real world,
they have led to exactly the same toxic environments and sadistic behaviors as
were observed in the simulated prison, independent of the sexes involved.
Further, note
that the majority of the participants in Zim- bardo’s study were young, white
Americans; there was thus also a “young, white American” bias to their
behaviors. Indeed, if one were to follow all such possible claimed biases through,
the results of the study could not be relevant to anyone or anywhere except ...
yep, to white, healthy, intelligent, middle-class, college-age men in
early-’70s Stanford, California. Yet, the elementary principles which led to the breakdown of the simulated
prison society into an
abusive one are relevant everywhere,
in all cultures and times, for women as surely as men: They are just basic
human psychology, brought out by power differentials and respect-hungering.
* * *
As Philip Zimbardo himself noted in
the 1970s, high schools share a number of significant characteristics with
prisons, in their re- spective authoritarian power structures. Yet obviously,
schools do not have the same degree of isolation from outside perspectives as
prisons do. Does that, then, mean that high schools
and prisons are indeed different in kind, not merely
in degree?
No, not at all.
Even prisoners, after all, are not totally isolat- ed: They receive visitors,
at designated times. And newly incarcer- ated prisoners will, for a short time
at least, offer real-world per- spectives which have otherwise died out in
prison life. Conversely, high school students cannot leave during class hours,
nor drop out completely before age sixteen.
Further, if a
student and a teacher disagree in a matter of dis- cipline, or about which
of them is in the wrong in a dispute,
who do you think the parents
are going to believe 90% of the time? Even if parent-teacher feedback and the
legal system (thankfully) con- strain teachers’ exercise of power, and even if
the freedom to go home at night (in non-residential
schools) allows the students to retain some
additional outside perspective on that environment, it is again all a
question of degree, not of kind. And degree = contin- uum. (Plus, guards in real prisons, as in Zimbardo’s
simulated one, go home at night just
as surely as do teachers and students, thus being integrated with their
surrounding community, too. Unfortu- nately, that doesn’t stop them from
sadistically punishing their prisoners to ensure the unconditional respect of the latter ... just as teachers expect unqualified respect
from their students.)
Realistically,
basic principles of social psychology ensure that teachers who have been
charged, as a condition of their continued employment, not merely with
assisting their students in learning (as in Milgram’s obedience experiments)
but with maintaining the respect and
obedience of their students (as in Zimbardo’s simulated prison), will
predictably degenerate into a less-intense version of good/bad prison guards
when faced with any challenge to their au- thority.
The formation
of cliques and consequent ostracism of out- castes, and the reaction
of those outcastes to being stuck in that
“hell on Earth” with “no way out,”
play a gargantuan role in shap- ing the behaviors of students, even for those
who have ideal home lives. Or would it surprise you to know that the shooters
in the Columbine massacre came from completely stable homes, with lov- ing
parents, to whom they explicitly apologized on videotape prior to the planned
massacre?
At Columbine in
1999, and in other similar shootings, the as- sassins were not “bringing their
dysfunctional home lives into school.” Rather, they were reacting to the
harassment and hu- miliation which they experienced from other students and
authori- ties in school. That, after
all, is why such young mass murderers kill their classmates and teachers, not
their parents or neighbors.
And if that is
true of the perpetrators of the worst of high- school tragedies, don’t you think it might also apply, at lower levels of intensity, even to the bulk of the high-school student
population? Of course it will.
* * *
[I]t seems to me that what went on
at Naropa, although more dramatic
than what we usually see around us, was simply
the lurid equivalent of what endlessly repeats itself in America in most systems
of coercive authority, not only those at Naropa....
Trungpa’s
behavior toward Merwin and Dana was es- sentially no different—in essence or
extent—from what we ordinarily accept without
question between doctors
and men- tal patients, or teachers and students, or military authorities [or guards and prisoners]. It
is here, where we always think discipline is necessary, that we habituate
people to doing what they’re told, to acceding to authority, and to accepting
without question the ways they are treated (Marin, 1995).
There will
always be those who are prone to feeling, especially from a safe distance, that
being a subject in ashramic “experi- ments” comparable to Zimbardo’s or
Milgram’s, with real (psycho- logical) shocks and physical deprivations in
closed hierarchical en- vironments, could be spiritually beneficial. (Note,
though, that sig- nificant concerns have been raised by psychologists regarding
the effects on the subjects in both of those classic studies, to the point
where neither of them can be repeated today, simply for ethical considerations.
And yet, ashram life continues )
Short of that
myopia, however, the rules and behaviors of the open-society “real world,”
constricting though they may be at times,
begin to look relatively benign by comparison. Conversely, if one has been on
the inside of our world’s ashrams and then left because being there felt
like a “prison,” that feeling has a
very sim- ple explanation.
For, structurally and in terms of individual and group psychological dynamics,
that is exactly what it was.
As Zimbardo himself
(1971) put it:
For me, a prison is any situation in
which one person’s free- dom and liberty are denied by virtue of the arbitrary
power exercised by another person or group.
And elsewhere, with his colleagues:
The inherently pathological [italics added] characteristics of the
prison situation itself ... were a sufficient
condition to produce aberrant, anti-social behavior (Haney, et al., 1973).
And, as we have
seen, nearly identical characteristics are suf- ficient to produce the same
reported pathological behaviors in the leaders and residents of our world’s
ashrams and monasteries.
Only three
things are really needed in order to begin creating a closed, toxic environment—whether that be a “cult,” a bad mar-
riage, a prison or a dictatorship. And those are (i) a significant power
differential between the leaders and their followers, (ii) a lack of checks and balances on the leaders to keep them from abus- ing their existing power
and grabbing for more, and (iii) sufficient psychological, financial and/or
physical (e.g., locks and bars) con- straints to keep the mistreated followers
from simply leaving. The increasingly “cult-like” nature of the environment
will then follow straightforward, simply via the presence of basic human
psychol- ogy in both the leaders/guards and their followers/prisoners.
Further, as in
Zimbardo’s study, the only necessary difference between those two groups is in
the roles which they have tacitly agreed to play. That is so, even while the
one group invariably turns quickly into a split collection of impotent “good
guards/disci- ples” and sadistic “Nazis,” while members of the other set follow
docilely or break down emotionally, yet are unable to “just leave.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
SPIRITUAL CHOICES
OF COURSE, NOT EVERYONE WOULD AGREE that
things are as bad as we have seen with today’s spiritual leaders and
communities. In- deed, one does not have to search far at all to find
psychological professionals who are more than willing to stand up and defend the highly questionable reported actions
of our world’s guru- figures.
In 1987, for
example, Dick Anthony and Ken Wilber, teaming with another of their like-minded
associates, published Spiritual Choices:
The Problem of Recognizing Authentic Paths to Inner Transformation. We will
evaluate the worth of that text shortly.
Anthony himself
has often served as an expert witness in de- fense of alternative religious movements accused of “brainwashing”
their members, and the like.
[He] listed some of his clients for
the record. That list in- cluded the “Unification Church [i.e., the Moonies,
whose founder ‘was convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and conspiracy to file false tax returns
and sentenced to a term in
federal prison’ (Singer, 2003)], the Hare Krishna movement,
350
The Way
International [and] Church of Scientology” (Ross, 2003).
Regarding the Moonies, then:
[In July of 2002] Moon announced
himself as “Savior, Mes- siah and King of Kings of all humanity.” He actually splashed this across newspapers throughout
America in full- page ads (Ross, 2002a).
As Moon himself
elaborated, in his Unification News (for
Au- gust 24, 2002):
In early July I spoke in five cities
around Korea at rallies held by the Women’s Federation for World Peace. There,
I declared that my wife ... and I are the True Parents of all humanity. I
declared that we are the Savior, the Lord of the Second Advent, the Messiah.
Enough
said—except to add that Moon owns the Washington
Times newspaper. (The Moonies also apparently own the Univer- sity of
Bridgeport, Connecticut [Hassan, 2000].) He has also been reported to be a
friend of (and up to $10 million donor to) the George Bush family (Kuncl, 2001), and has had close contact with
Mormon U.S. politician Orrin Hatch.
Regarding The
Way International: Details as to the allega- tions of sexual misconduct against
leaders at TWI exist online at EmpireNet (2003).
And for those who wish to leave that nontradi- tional Bible group, the
following allegations have been made:
Sharon Bell says Way members told
her “it might be neces- sary to kill anyone who tried to leave the group.”
Timothy Goodwin was told the devil would kill him if he left (Rudin and Rudin,
1980).
Such organizations
as these, then, constitute some of Dick An- thony’s reported clients, which he
would surely, one assumes, not hesitate to suggest are “not as bad as” the
other, genuinely “prob- lematic” groups in the world.
Just because they are “nontraditional religions,” after all, is
no reason to discriminate against them.
Also reportedly
on Anthony’s list of nontraditional religions, however,
are the Branch Davidians [of David
Koresh fame] ... and he says, “In the United States, the Catholic Church, well
it’s definitely the largest nontraditional religion” (Ross,
2003).
The idea that
the Catholic Church is “nontraditional” is puz- zling—leaving one wondering,
indeed, what religions might ever qualify as “traditional”—but we may let that
pass.
Anthony’s
religious allegiance belongs to Meher Baba, who in his heyday had “as many as a
million devotees ... in India and thousands in the United States” (Manseau and
Sharlet, 2004).
When Pete
Townshend of the Who embarked on his own spiri- tual quest in 1968, he too
found his guru in the voluntarily mute Meher—the “Baba” in “Baba O’Riley”
refers to none other—as did the Small Faces’ Ronnie Lane. (In much earlier,
silent film days, Hollywood stars Douglas
Fairbanks and Mary Pickford once gave a reception in Meher’s honor.) Townshend
actually ran a “Baba Cen- ter” in England for a time. His solo LP, Who Came First, further grew out of a
planned tribute to the guru, who himself claimed “to have been taken into the council
of the gods and to know the future
of all mankind” (Brunton, 1935).
As Baba O’Meher
himself put it:
Once I publicly announce myself as a
messiah, nothing will be able to withstand my power. I shall openly work
miracles in proof of my mission at the same time. Restoring sight to the blind,
healing the sick, maimed and crippled, yes, even raising the dead—these things
will be child’s play to me! (in Brunton, 1935).
Indeed, Meher
“Eyesight to the Blind” Baba claimed to be, not merely an avatar, but the Avatar for this world age, after
having been confirmed as such by Upasani Baba. (Interestingly, Adi Da purported
a connection to the same Upasani Baba, if not to his twenty-five virgin wives [Bob, 2000].) He further claimed to have previously
manifested as Zoroaster, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Je- sus and Muhammad.
In response to questions about his
spiritual identity, Baba tap-tapped things [on his letter-board] like “I am God
in hu- man form. Of course many people say they are God-incar- nate, but they
are hypocrites” (Manseau and Sharlet, 2004).
Baba further
told an illustrative story of a guru who had or- dered one of his disciples to
kill the latter’s own child. Having obe- diently complied and buried it
according to instruction, the sage then told the same disciple to go home,
where he would find the child alive, as he soon did.
“And they all lived happily
ever after.”
Though an extreme example of the
methods a Master may use in order to show his disciples the illusory nature of
this phenomenal world, it illustrates the unquestioning faith which a disciple
should have for his Master, and how utterly detached and obedient he is
expected to be (Adriel, 1947).
That, then, is
obviously the degree of obedience which Meher expected from his own followers,
in order for them to be regarded as being “loyal” to him—as Adriel was, and
presumably Anthony himself still is. (Yogananda told a similar “true story” in
his Auto- biography, regarding a man
who threw himself off a Himalayan precipice at Babaji’s command, to show his
obedience. When sub- sequently brought back to life after passing that “test,”
he became one of Babaji’s “immortal” band of disciples. As manipulative fairy
tales go. ) Indeed, the following
absurd recommendation from An-
thony (et al., 1987; italics added)
would seem to support that pro- posal, regarding loyalty:
The idea of a master having perfect consciousness is uncom-
fortable and unwelcome—and therefore not taken seriously
—because the perfection implies
total faith, surrender, and
obedience to the master, no matter what one is told to do.
Indeed, as Baba himself
(1967) explained:
It is only possible to gain God-realization by the grace of a Perfect Master.
And such grace
is gained, of course, only through uncondi- tional obedience. (Note: Anthony
[et al., 1987] never actually met Meher
in the flesh, and is thus in a uniquely poor position to rec- ommend surrender
and total “obedience to the master.” Rather than practicing such in-person
subservience, he has simply had a few mystical experiences which he
precariously takes to have been initiated by the deceased Baba. In such a situation, it would indeed be
easy to have “total faith” that one has found a “Perfect
Master.”
Indeed, that perspective is fully
comparable to Wilber’s safe dis- tance from Da and Cohen, and his equal recommendation that oth- ers
surrender themselves to an “adventure” which he himself has never had.)
Meher Baba’s
teachings also included the instruction, “Don’t worry. Be happy” (C. Welch,
1995). His ideas in general greatly influenced Townshend in writing his classic
rock opera, “Tommy,” about a child traumatized into being deaf, dumb and blind,
and thereafter receiving his knowledge of the world only through (skin) sensations.
Ironically,
Townshend himself went stone deaf within a dec- ade of recording that album,
after years of in-concert aural abuse. Along with Baba’s silence, then, between
the two of them they cov- ered two-thirds of Tommy’s disabilities.
If I was Roger
Daltrey, I’d be having regular eye checkups.
For, Baba’s own healing abilities, even while alive, seem to have been
markedly less impressive than he and his followers claimed them to be. Indeed,
as Paul Brunton (1935) related:
I have taken the trouble to
investigate during my travels the few so-called miracles of healing which
[Meher Baba] is al- leged to have performed. One is a case of appendicitis, and
the sufferer’s simple faith in Meher is said to have com- pletely cured him.
But strict enquiry shows that the doctor who has attended this man could
discover nothing worse than severe indigestion! In another case a nice old
gentle- man, who has been reported cured overnight of a whole cata- log of
ailments, seems to have had little more than a swollen ankle!
As further
detailed by Brunton, Meher’s numerous prophecies concerning upcoming calamitous
events fared no more impressive- ly, consistently failing to materialize on
time.
Brunton then came to an understandable conclusion:
Meher Baba, though a good man and
one living an ascetic life, is unfortunately suffering from colossal delusions
about his own greatness ... a fallible authority, a man subject to constantly
changing moods, and an egotist who demands complete enslavement on the part of
his brain-stupefied fol- lowers.
And what did
Meher himself have to say about all of those concerns?
Not much:
Baba, hailed as a Perfect Spiritual
Master [of which there are supposedly exactly fifty-six present
on Earth at all times, with the highest of them always
being a man (Adriel, 1947)], had taken a vow of silence but he was supposed to
reveal all and give his followers “the word” before his death. Unfortu- nately he died in 1969 before he could utter another
sentence (C. Welch, 1995).
A mere half
century after Brunton’s reasonable conclusions regarding Meher Baba’s veracity,
Feuerstein (1992; italics added) opined:
It
became evident to many that his announcement [of the an- ticipated silence-breaking] had been
meant symbolically, though some saw
it as an indication that he had, after all, been duping everyone.
All things
considered, then, good to be one of the “some”
rather than the “many.” Although one suspects that, overall, the “many”
are probably far less in number than
the “some.”
In any case, it
must be quite clear by now that if “idiot com- passion” exists, in coddling
people rather than judiciously telling them the painful truth for their own
benefit, then so too does “idiot tolerance.” The latter is indeed exemplified
via insufferable apolo- getics for unrepentant (and not infrequently highly
deluded) guru- figures and organizations of which little good can really be
said. Further, what meager good can be legitimately claimed about them does not even begin to weigh against
the bad. Thus, any “balanced” presentation would still look like an unbalanced
one to anyone who had naïvely bought into the scrubbed, public face of the guru-figure or organization.
Those figures
and groups invariably have well-oiled PR (or propaganda) departments which have
fully succeeded in publiciz- ing the good elements (both real and fabricated)
of the spiritual teacher and his/her organization. It is only rarely, however,
that the alleged bad aspects of each
of those make their way into print, often against reported violent attempts at
suppression or retribu- tion.
* * *
Incredibly, most of the
“enlightened” individuals and ashrams in- cluded herein would have been
considered to fall close to the “saf- est” of the categories in the typologies
of Dick Anthony (1987), et al., via the Spiritual
Choices book. That is, nearly all of the spiri- tual teachers we have met thus far (not including the leaders of the
Hare Krishnas, Moonies, or Jim Jones) were:
·
Monistic rather than dualistic—i.e., working toward realiz- ing a
state of inherent conscious oneness with all things, as opposed to placing God
as inexorably separate from crea- tion and approachable only through a unique savior
such as Jesus, with the failure
to follow the appropriate savior
lead- ing to eternal damnation (exceptions: none)
·
Multilevel—i.e., having a “distinct hierarchy of spiritual
authority,” in gnosis versus teachings versus interpreta- tions (unilevel
exceptions, which “confuse real and pseudo- transcendence of mundane
consciousness,” include Find- horn, Scientology, Rajneesh and TM
[notwithstanding that the Maharishi’s teachings themselves are rooted in the
Ve- das]), and
·
Non-charismatic—i.e., emphasizing techniques of spiritual
transformation (e.g., meditation), rather than relying on a personal
relationship between disciple and teacher as the means of evolution/enlightenment
of the former (excep- tions: Ramakrishna, Meher Baba, Neem Karoli Baba, Adi Da,
Muktananda, Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati, Jetsunma, Cohen, and Sai Baba and Chinmoy
to lesser degrees)
Trungpa,
Satchidananda and Zen Buddhism were all explic- itly placed in Anthony’s
“safest” category—of “multilevel, technical monism.” In his second-safest
grouping (“multilevel, charismatic monism”) we find Meher Baba, Neem Karoli
Baba, Muktananda, Chinmoy and Adi Da.
If those are
“safe” spiritual leaders and communities, though, one shudders to think what
“dangerous” ones might look like. One’s
jaw drops further to find that, as late as 2003, Wilber has still been
recommending Spiritual Choices to
others as a means of distinguishing “safe” groups from potentially
“problematic” ones. That such recommendations are coming years
after the central
thesis (as documented above) of the
text has been wholly discred- ited in practice, is astounding.
Fooled by the
arguments of Anthony, et al., I myself had en- dorsed Spiritual Choices at one point in a previous work. Obvi- ously,
however, my opinion of that book and of its authors’ ideas has matured
significantly since then. Indeed, by this point I very much regret that previous naïvete on my part,
particularly when it is coupled with ideas such as the following, from the same
group of “experts”:
[Tom] Robbins and [Dick] Anthony’s
own contribution [to In Gods We Trust (1982)]
includes a superb introduction— perhaps the best single chapter in the anthology;
a complete and devastating critique of the brainwashing model; and an
insightful report on the Meher Baba community (Wilber,
1983b).
The relevant
meager, twelve-page, utterly simplistic chapter on brainwashing, however, is
anything but a “complete” critique, much less a “devastating” one. Whatever one
may think of the brainwashing and mind-control debate, how could a
five-thousand word treatment of that complex
subject possibly be “complete”? En- tire books have been written from both
sides of the controversy without exhausting it; entire Library of Congress
Cataloguing in Publication designations exist for the subject! Even if the
short pa- per in question were the greatest
ever written, it could not possibly be “complete”!
For myself, I
have found the chapter in question to be utterly unimpressive. Indeed,
it shows near-zero understanding of the psy-
chological factors influencing one’s “voluntary joining,” and later difficulty
in leaving, such environments. There is nothing whatso- ever “devastating”
about the text, whether one agrees or disagrees with Anthony’s overall
perspective.
By stark
contrast, for a genuinely intelligent and
insightful discussion of the brainwashing and mind-control question, consult
Chapters 2 and 3
of Michael Langone’s (1995) anthology, Recovery from Cults. Chapter 13 of
the same book offers many chilling ex- amples of previously healthy persons
suffering mental breakdowns as an alleged result of various, unspecified, large
group awareness training sessions. Child abuse in so-called cults is covered
disturb- ingly well in its Chapter 17.
For a revealing
example of Anthony’s own dismal attempts at critiquing other scholars’ ideas,
see Zablocki (2001).
* * *
Zimbardo, for one, had the common sense
and compassion to re- move the prisoners who weren’t psychologically able to
leave on their own, from his simulated prison. Religious apologists by con-
trast, in support of their insistence that brainwashing and mind control don’t
exist, would more likely simply leave the poor bas- tards there to suffer.
After all, everyone in the ashram/prison en- tered that totalitarian
environment voluntarily, and other people manage to leave on occasion, so what
is the problem? Why inter- fere with that “nontraditional” society,
where no one is being physi- cally constrained to stay?
In our view persons have a right to
enter totalistic subcul- tures and have done so voluntarily for centuries
(Robbins and Anthony, 1982).
Certainly, we
each have the right to enter, and remain in, any subculture in which we wish to participate; that much is blindingly
obvious. But it is not difficult to comprehend the dangers inherent in walking
naïvely into environments where, if one has bought deeply into the teachings at
any point, it is not easy to leave. There
is thus at least an obligation to warn others as to what they may be getting themselves into, in voluntarily
entering such contexts. To fight for the right to enter and “surrender
completely” to one or another “holy fool,” without in any way comprehending the difficul-
ties involved in leaving, is beyond acceptable human ignorance. It is also absolutely guaranteed to create more pain than it could
ever alleviate.
Robbins and
Anthony (1982) then give their grossly oversim- plified perspective on the
constraints binding people into closed communities:
The psychological and peer group
pressures which are mobi- lized to inhibit leaving [so-called] cults should
probably not be equated with armed guards
and fences in their capacity
to influence attitudes.
But: Tell that
to Zimbardo’s prisoner #819—the “bad” prisoner who refused to leave the study—for whom those pressures
were
indeed just as constraining, and more psychologically destructive, than any mere “armed guards and fences” could have been.
Indeed, whether the constraints take the form of peer pressures, literal
fences, or concern about “pursuing furies,” they will all have the same effect.
That is, they will all make it extremely difficult for one to leave
such environments, even having entered them voluntarily to begin with.
As
I later tried to explain
to people outside
Scientology, I was like a two year old child. I was
incapable of leaving home. They owned my soul. The ties binding me to the Org,
though invisible, were more powerful than any physical bond could have been. I
was in a trap more powerful than any cage
with iron bars and a lock. Mentally I belonged to them (Wake- field, 1996; italics added).
[Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard]
controlled our thoughts to such an extent that you couldn’t think of leaving
without thinking there was something wrong with you (Gerry Armstrong, in [Miller, 1987]).
Without having
done in-depth research (particularly in the pre-Internet days), however, such
poor souls had no way of know- ing what
they were getting themselves into. Thus, they suffer end- lessly, for no
greater sin than having “surrendered completely” to one or another “god” in a
voluntarily entered totalitarian environ- ment. Meanwhile, our world’s unduly
respected theoreticians con- gratulate themselves, and each other, on having
composed “devas- tating critiques” which embody little reference indeed to the
spec- trum of relevant concerns.
One may further
argue endlessly about what constitutes coer- cive “brainwashing” or relatively
subtle “mind control,” and wheth- er any given
community is guilty of either or both of those. The an- swer does not really matter here, simply because there
are people trapped in every such environment who cannot, psychologically, “just
leave,” regardless of any “theories” which may say that they shouldn’t be thus
constrained. Zimbardo demonstrated that with a mere dozen previously healthy
individuals thirty years ago; as did
Wilber himself, inadvertently, at the low, suicidal point of his own second
marriage.
One might
further be tempted to disparage the intelligence, independence or emotional stability
of #819 as a cause for his in-
ability to leave the simulated
prison. One would not likely cast the same aspersions on Wilber himself,
however, in his “inability to leave”
a marriage which he had voluntarily and enthusiastically entered, but which
came to (at that low point) cause him nothing but distress.
One may well
then be free to abandon those who cannot leave any environment, if one’s
superficial theories say that they should
be able to leave, since “others are able to.” One might even apply that
callous idea to individuals ranging from trapped disciples to battered wives
who entered their marriages “voluntarily.” One is not equally free, however, to
lay any claim to bodhisattva-like
com- passion, while uncaringly turning one’s back on others who clearly cannot,
in those circumstances, help themselves. Such a “survival of the
fittest/rudest” approach, enforced in these contexts, is in no way worthy of
the name “spiritual.”
* * *
[So-called cults] clearly differ
from such purely authoritarian groups as the military
... and centuries-old Roman Catholic
... orders. These groups, though
rigid and controlling, lack a double agenda and are not manipulative or
leader-centered (Singer, 2003).
Regarding the military,
though:
[T]he military uses many components
of mind control. [S]ome vets have
[told me that] their recruiter lied to them [in a “double agenda”] (Hassan,
2000).
Or consider
this, from one of Philip Zimbardo’s (2004b)
corre- spondents:
I joined the United States Marine
Corps, pursuing a child- hood dream. [While there, I was] the victim of
repeated ille- gal physical and mental abuse. An investigation showed I
suffered more than forty unprovoked beatings....
The point I am
trying to make is that the manner in which your guards carried about their duties
and the way that military drill instructors do is unbelievable. I was amazed at
all the parallels.
A body of social science evidence
shows that when systemati- cally
practiced by state-sanctioned police, military
or de- structive [so-called] cults, mind control can induce false con-
fessions, create converts
who willingly torture
or kill “invent- ed enemies,” engage indoctrinated members to work
tire- lessly, give up their money—and even their lives—for “the cause” (Zimbardo, 2002; italics added).
In any case,
Zimbardo’s simulated prison environment, too, had no hidden agenda, and was not
leader-centered. (It was “ma- nipulative” only to the degree required to
enforce the desired level of obedience and respect from its prisoners—or from
its “congrega- tion”—each of whom had again voluntarily entered the study, be-
ing in no way deceptively recruited.) Yet, “toxic is as toxic does”— that is,
the relevant effects on their members
are no different, even if one can list a series of differences in the apparent causes.
Of course, even
the most reportedly destructive group will have
aspects which are not “cult-like”—particularly for members who are only
participating “from a distance” on Sabbaths or Sun- day mornings, not seven
days a week. Those attributes can thus be used to argue/theorize that the
groups in question are rather “re- spectable” and “mainline” ones, which might
appear to match any definition for what a “cult” is only via “picking and
choosing.” Yet, a few good points
will never outweigh multitudinous shortcomings in other regards.
Further,
whether any of those communities are leader- centered or not is essentially
irrelevant. For, one can be impris- oned by an infallible, unquestionable
ideology—ascribed to rele- vant prophets and archaic “holy scriptures,” which
one cannot dis- obey without suffering severe consequences—just as easily as by an individual charismatic leader.
A prison
or a high school or a heartless
business corporation or a fundamentalist religious
ministry or a frat house during pledging “Hell Week,” or a bad marriage or
an abusive family, is assuredly not a destructive, sadistic, brainwashing “cult,”
by any definition of the
phrase.
But still ...
one cannot help but notice that each of those envi- ronments can be highly intolerant of even minor
disobedience to its authority-figures. Likewise, each may
well offer no “exit clause” whereby one can “just leave” without suffering
extreme social or financial penalties, should one be mistreated by one’s peers
and/or superiors.
I
saw that the structure of most families, businesses and gov- ernments were as committed to keeping
their members in their places as my [so-called] cult [under Yogi Bhajan] ever
had been (K. Khalsa, 1994).
Even in a free
and democratic country under siege one can see precisely the same psychological
dynamics. For, a populace rally- ing ‘round the flag will treat even the
mildest questioning of its leaders’ abilities or motives as being
near-treasonous—worthy of imprisonment or deportation, if not of literal
excommunication. In doing so, they are behaving exactly like the members of any
“cult” would, when confronted with even the most gentle suggestion that their
“divine, infallible” leader may not actually be fit to lead, or in having the
well-being of their “saved” or “best” group be threat- ened.
And, just as
with “brainwashed cult members,” such a popu- lace, too, willingly surrenders
its hard-won freedoms to even the most bumbling and dishonest authorities, in
order to once again feel safe and saved from other “evil, persecuting”
outsiders. And, just as a guru-figure and his followers may truly believe that
the only reason they are being picked on is because their superior in- tegrity,
etc., makes others feel uncomfortable, presidents and en- tire countries
will advance and believe the same foolish
arguments. And, the quickest way for both spiritual and political
leaders to detract from their own scandalous behaviors and associated at-
tempts at controlling their followers’ thoughts is to focus on the “war against
Evil,” which exists in full force only outside the bor- ders of the community,
and cannot be allowed inside ... or, if al- ready inside, must be exterminated
(e.g., via witch hunts or geno- cide).
The complication, of course, arises
when the enemy
is real, has indeed infiltrated the borders of the
community, and is intent on destroying your freedoms and way of life. Such
situations rarely arise in the spiritual world, where “Satan” is just a
chimera; the political world, unfortunately, is not so simple and harmless.
* * *
The
tortures which frat house pledges
in particular will voluntarily
undergo are further worth giving additional consideration to. For there,
prospective house members have been known to willingly endure beatings,
drink their own urine, and literally choke to
death in attempting to swallow slabs
of raw liver (Cialdini, 2001). All of that behavior, of course, is the product
of absolutely no “mind
control,” deceptive recruiting, sleep deprivation or hypnotic chant- ing, etc.
Rather, it is willingly embraced simply in order that one may become a member
of an “in” group—“saved” from the “damna- tion” of being a social outcaste.
The
corresponding social dynamic in the world of both nontra- ditional and traditional
religion, with its associated unsaved
“spiri- tual outcastes” is, in my opinion, grossly underrated.
Also, consider
Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments, again showing that, when faced with the
choice between being liked ver- sus being right or telling the truth, we
frequently choose the for- mer—i.e., on the average, around one-third of the
time. That is, we will lie to others, and to ourselves, in order to fit in, to not look fool- ish, to avoid criticism, and/or for
assuming that the group knows better than we do.
Now, simply
couple that fact with the idea that if we tell our- selves a lie often enough,
we will eventually believe it. (Even in Asch’s study, there were subjects who
genuinely believed that the obviously wrong, peer-pressured answers they had
given in the group, were actually correct [M.
Underwood, 2005].)
The question
now, though, is not which of several lines is the same length as another.
Rather, it is whether Guru X is the most enlightened being around. And the
“confederates” vouching for that guru
as being the “right answer” have been there longer than you have, and are thus
more spiritually advanced than you are— only “ego” would question that, after
all. Thus, they know better than you do.
So, in that
environment, simply via the pressures of conformi- ty, without any necessary
techniques of “mind control” being ap- plied: Who do you think Da Greatest
Living Realizer is?
Controlled
studies have further shown that the greater the amount of trouble or pain we
have to go through in order to get something, the more we will value it later:
Aronson and Mills [demonstrated] that the severity of an ini- tiation ceremony significantly
heightens the newcomer’s commitment to
the group (Cialdini, 2001; italics added).
And, of course,
the more committed one is, the more difficult it will be to leave.
The experiences
of Zen meditators sitting zazen in
the lotus posture for hours on end, their knees burning and bodies aching—
being hit with “the stick” should they even shift their positions— will
unavoidably fall under the sway of exactly the same principle. For, those
sitters are effectively “pledging” to be accepted as mem- bers of a fraternity
of more enlightened, respected and admired individuals than themselves.
Whether there
is, or has ever been, any calculation or malice on the part of the spiritual
leaders in all that, is irrelevant here. For, the psychological effect is just
as certain. That is, when one has gone through extreme pain and humiliation in
order to get closer to enlightenment and be “one of the boys,” one will
thereaf- ter encounter great psychological difficulty in leaving the commu-
nity, or even in questioning whether “enlightenment” is anything of value.
Any effects of
explicit “mind control” (in sleep deprivation, love-bombing, hypnotic
induction, etc.) would only be on top of the “baseline” of conformity, and of the commitment (and ensuing diffi-
culty in leaving) involved in “pledging enlightenment.” And those baselines,
arising from simple and unavoidable human psychology, are already enough to
create environments which, were only a lit- tle theology to be thrown into the
mix, one could hardly avoid call- ing religious “cults.”
“Cult members,”
at least prior to joining their respective or- ganizations, do not differ
significantly in terms of their psycholo- gies and associated mental stability
as compared to their counter- parts on the “outside,” any more than Zimbardo’s
“Nazi” guards and docile prisoners differed prior to their incarceration.
(Again, explicit and recognized psychological tests given prior to that im-
prisonment documented exactly that homogeneity.) Even more un- settling,
however, the closed societies which are composed of those same members differ
from our “safe, daily life” only in degree, not in kind.
Indeed, the
fact that “problematic” groups partake of exactly the same psychological
dynamics and social structures as does our “normal” world, just at a higher
level of intensity, is precisely why previously healthy groups of people can
degenerate into sadistic “cults” in less than a long weekend, even without a
guru to push that devolution along.
So, as far as “spiritual choices”
go, the safest thing, really,
is to “Just say, ‘No.’” Or, failing that, to ignore, as much as you possibly
can, the advice of “experts” who
search too ardently for reasons to “not worry” and “be happy” about our world’s
spiritual organiza- tions.
For example:
When questioned in 1988 [i.e., a
full ten years after the Jonestown mass suicides] about the Jim Jones group,
[J. Gordon] Melton said, “This wasn’t a cult. This was a respect- able,
mainline Christian group” (Hassan, 2000).
When you are
dealing with people—however warm-hearted, kind and considerate they may be in
their private lives—with such professional views of reality as to insist that
even Jonestown was not a “cult” ... oy vey.
Nor is there,
unfortunately, any comfort to be taken in the relative absence of geographic
isolation in North America or the like, as compared to Jones’ Guyana. That is
so, in spite of the claims of long-time “cult” observers such as the late Louis
Jolyon West. For, in the immediate aftermath of the Jonestown suicides, Dr.
West opined:
This wouldn’t have happened in California.
But they lived in total alienation from the rest of the world in a jungle
situa- tion in a hostile country (in Cialdini, 2001).
In the years since
Jonestown, however, the tragedies involving both David Koresh (in Waco,
Texas) and the Heaven’s Gate cult (San Diego) have occurred. Indeed, the latter
1997 suicides were enacted even more willingly than those of Jim Jones’
followers had been. For, no gun-barrel threats of force at
all were required on the part of the leaders of that
UFO-related cult. Rather, the suicides were simply part of their members’
sincere efforts to get to the “Next Level” of conscious evolution, in actions
which fully “made sense” within the
believed theology of that organization. That is, the Heaven’s Gate followers
simply did what they took to be neces- sary to ensure their own
salvation—albeit after many years of waiting.
So, how badly
do you want the form of salvation
called “en- lightenment”? Are you willing to do whatever it takes—to “face the
heat” of Truth, regardless of how bad it may get? To have the crap beaten out of you? To have your
ass roasted? To eat barbiturates in applesauce?
[T]he line that separates religious
enthusiasm from [so- called] cult zombiehood is narrower than we commonly pre-
tend ... our own beliefs (or the beliefs of our friends) in an- gels, UFOs,
ESP, Kennedy assassination conspiracies, you name it, differ from the elaborate
sci-fi ideologies of groups like Heaven’s Gate in degree, not in kind (Futrelle, 1997).
So, assuredly, it could “happen
in California.” It already has.
The heavily
armed Rajneeshpuram could easily have violently and apocalyptically “happened”
too—even without mass suicides— had it not been for its fortunate collapse
following the guru’s “brave retreat”
out of the country. Plus, much of Charles Manson’s mind-control programming of
his own followers, in the late ’60s, was effected at the machine-gun fortified
Spahn Ranch, outside of Los Angeles (Krassner, 1993).
And all of that
is sadly not surprising. For, the issue in all of these cases is the degree of
isolation from outside ideas and per- spectives, specifically from being able
to see how others “like you” are behaving in the real world, to use that as a
guide for your own thoughts and actions. And one can be thus isolated and
obsessed by apocalyptic fears in the
middle of a major city, or in a simulated basement prison at the center of a
bustling university campus, just as surely as one can be so in the darkest
jungle.
Note: Dick Anthony himself
was present at an alternative spirituality- based seminar in the mid-’80s with both Zimbardo
and Wilber, along with numerous other highly placed transpersonal
psychologists. The footnoted indication of Zimbardo’s attendance at that
meeting, how- ever—plus two inconsequential questions asked by him of an inter-
viewee (Werner Erhard)—is the only mention of him in Anthony, Eck- er and
Wilber’s (1987) Spiritual Choices. That
is, not a word is spoken of Zimbardo’s (or Milgram’s) groundbreaking
professional work, while the other contributors to that misled volume occupy
themselves with the valiant struggle of determining how to distinguish “safe”
guru- figures and organizations (such
as Trungpa’s and Muktananda’s) from reportedly “problematic” ones. Nor,
amazingly, have Zimbardo’s clas- sic observations even quietly made their way
into the confident argu- ments given there, by people whose lives have been
devoted to under- standing those issues.
Sad. Very sad.
CHAPTER XXIX
AFTER THE ORDEAL
I thought this ashram was going to
show me the way. No more politics. Only philosophy and salvation. I should get
so lucky. There’s more politics in one Indian
ashram than in the
whole of the Western Hemisphere! (in Mehta, 1979).
Ashrams are often the heaviest, most
neurotic, political set- tings I’ve ever been in (Dass and Levine, 1977).
Dass himself, recall, was a clinical
psychologist at Harvard; his categorization of others’ behaviors as “neurotic”
is thus an in- formed, not merely a colloquial, opinion.
Ashrams, in my experience, are
lunatic asylums filled with jealous and needy people.... [M]ost of the ashrams
I have known and visited
are not sacred environments where people progress;
they’re places in which people regress—to blind adoration, spiritual vanity,
sibling rivalry, mirroring and parroting of the so-called master—and in my
experience, I have to say, sadly, that I have seen very little real spiritual
progress made in them (Harvey, 2000).
367
My life was forever altered by my
experience in a [so-called] religious cult. Not only did I abandon my passions
in life, I spent fifteen years following someone else’s path. When I fi- nally
awakened from my enchantment, I found myself with near-zero self-esteem, a lot
of regret for many wasted years, and plenty of anger at my own naïvete, as well
as being furi- ous with my former group. I felt that a gigantic chunk of my
real identity had been stolen from me without my conscious consent. At the same
time, I felt a euphoric sense of freedom and complete delight that I now had my
life back in my own hands (Goldhammer, 1996).
ONE MAY JOIN A SPIRITUAL
ORGANIZATION for reasons ranging from the childish search for a substitute
parent-figure to the mature hope of achieving liberation or enlightenment in
this lifetime. And having thus joined, there is a comparable range of reasons
to stay. In that regard, one former ashram resident informally estimated that 85%
of monks and nuns he had met were there just for power, control or codependence
trips, or for fear of the world. Or, for a feeling of belonging to something
larger, and for enjoying the star- dust falling on their robes. That is, for
adulation in their positions as ashram “rock stars,” a respect which they would
not receive anywhere else in the world for any reason, much less for so little
accomplishment as the color of the robe they are wearing. Or, they were there
“just for laziness, for being trapped or were just too ‘short’ of brains to know any better.” (If that estimate
of 85% seems excessively harsh, consider that the Dalai Lama himself
proposed an even less complimentary figure of 90%. My own independent estimate
had been a mere 80%.)
Fond memories
of past good times, in one’s early “honeymoon” days with the guru-figure, can
also play a role in keeping disciples living in the community (Strelley, 1987).
Other reasons
for staying typically include financial con- straints and atrophied “real
world” skills. Indeed, the more that one’s life has been positively changed in
the very early stages of one’s involvement with any spiritual organization, the
more likely it is that one will have—big
mistake—donated all of one’s worldly goods to the “God-inspired” work. That
noble if naïve commitment, however, makes it much harder to leave when the “love” wears off, and you begin to
realize what you have gotten yourself into. And then, how to get out of it? For, in the best possible successful out-
come, your most recent job reference is still, in the eyes of the
busi- ness world, from a “cult.”
Doctors who had for years worked as
carpenters, cooks, and laborers began [after Rajneeshpuram collapsed] with
part- time work in emergency rooms or covering for other sann- yasin physicians who had never come to live on the ranch.
Architects worked as draftsmen and reporters as proofread- ers and copy editors.
Nurses who had been in charge of whole
medical wards before they came to the ranch worked private duty or part time in
clinics (Gordon, 1987).
Of course,
there are also positive reasons for staying in the ashram environment,
including the energies and love which the residents have felt to be emanating
from the guru-figure—whether those energies are real or (far more likely)
simply imagined. By contrast, however, weigh the following, where there were
demon- strably no “divine energies” whatsoever flowing, yet the effect was
substantially the same:
The Beatles [were] such a hit that Life magazine showed a picture of people
scraping up the earth and saying: “The Beatles walked here,” as if these young
musicians were Je- sus Christ Himself (Radha, 1978).
Indeed, when the
Fab Four toured North America, there were girls in the audience not merely
fainting, but literally losing blad- der control. None of that, though, was
from any overwhelming, ra- diant energies which John, Paul or George—much less
Ringo— were giving off, in spite of their best attempts at wearing their
fame/divinity well:
Who could think ill of boys who,
smothering inner revulsion, were charming to the chain of handicapped
unfortunates wheeled in by credulous minders
deluded that a “laying-on of hands” by the four pop deities would
bring about a cure? (Clayson, 1996).
And yet,
suppose that George had been christened as “enlight- ened” by the Maharishi or
the Hare Krishnas, or Elvis taken as an avatar by Daya Mata. (Presley actually
“had messianic concepts of himself as the savior of mankind in the early 1970s”
[Cloud, 2000].) One can then only imagine
the profound “darshan
energies”
which their fans would have sworn,
from their own experience, to be able to feel flowing from them. One can
likewise easily picture the miraculous “coronas” and the like which The King
might have manifested. (Even as it stands, Elvis believed that he could move
clouds with the power of his
thoughts, but that is another story. As one of his handlers noted, if you take
enough drugs, you can see anything you want.)
Conversely, no
small percentage of the disciples vouching for the divinity of their own
guru-figures are the same group-thinking ones who can see coronas which aren’t
actually there, etc. Under- stood in that context, their testimonies as to the
greatness of any guru-figure cannot be taken seriously. Yet, history and
hagiogra- phy are filled to the bursting point with exactly such individuals.
The late Swami
Radha, for one, again looked askance at the reverence displayed for the “mere
mortals” constituting the Beatles. One suspects, however, that had the relevant
ground been trodden upon by her own guru, the “miraculous god-man” Swami
Sivananda Himself, she would have been among the first to devot- edly scrape it
up. Indeed, were she to have given that a miss, that irreverence would
certainly have placed her in the minority among devoted spiritual seekers, and
would in all likelihood have called her own loyalty to the guru into question.
I watched as eager devotees grabbed
at [Sai Baba’s] foot- prints in the sand, joyfully throwing the holy sand on
their hair, heads and children; and some, even eating it (Jack Scher, in [Warner, 1990]).
When I attended my Leaving Darshan, I was given a small
wooden box with something of Bhagwan [Rajneesh] in it—a hair, or nail clipping,
I don’t know what because you are supposed to never open it (in Palmer and
Sharma, 1993).
My mind was filled with joy to be
able to eat some of Gu- rudev’s [i.e., Nityananda’s] leftover food. I would rub
on my body particles of dust from where he had sat (Muktananda, 1978).
[C]ommon forms of homage to one’s
guru include drinking the water with
which his feet have been washed (Kripal, 1995).
[A] discarded toilet seat from Jetsunma’s house had been rescued and saved by her students as
a relic (Sherrill, 2000).
Likewise, among
the sacred objects offered in a recent auction of items which had been blessed
by being touched by Adi Da was a used Q-tip “stained
with Adi Da’s precious earwax.”
Minimum bid:
$108 (Elias,
2000). In a previous auction, a half-smoked cigarette butt reportedly
sold for $800 (Elias, 2000a).
As Tarlo (1997)
then finally noted:
It was embarrassing to see these
supposedly serious seekers behaving [around Andrew Cohen] like a bunch of
rock-star fans.
Or conversely,
as a woman once said to me at a David Bowie concert,
with regard to the headliner: “This man is God.” (Cf. “[Adi Da] is utterly God”
[in Da, 1974; self-published].)
The psychology
of the “believer,” then, is obviously the same, whether the object touched by
the “holy sage” is sand, a bowling ball or a toilet seat, and regardless of
whether the sacred butt (on toilet or cigarette) in question belongs to
Jetsunma, Adi Da or Rin- go Starr.
For my own
part, I would have more faith and trust in Sri Ringo.
* * *
Frances Vaughan (in Anthony, et al.,
1987) gives the following set of questions, which potential new members of alternative
religious movements are advised to consider before joining:
Does the group keep secrets about
its organization and the leader? How do members of the group respond to
embarrass- ing questions?.... Do members display stereotypic behavior that emulates
the leader?.... Are members free to leave?.... Does the group’s public image
misrepresent its true nature?
Reasonable
questions, all. But where to get an
honest answer to them? From the
guru-figure? From his inner circle of disciples? From other loyal members of
the group, anxious to have you join them? Surely it is obvious that any
spiritual teacher or organiza- tion with things to hide would never tell the
truth in response to those questions, instead
giving the potential
devotee the “right”
answers which he/she wanted to hear
in the first place. And is it not obvious that all organizations and leaders keep secrets from the public?
Does the Vatican have secrets? Yes,
as every government, corporation, NGO [i.e., non-governmental organization],
and other institution does (Allen, 2004).
Is it not
equally obvious that all groups (even secular ones) have “pod people” members
who mimic their leaders? (Even physi- cist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s graduate
students used to uncon- sciously imitate his manner of smoking cigarettes.
Oppenheimer, for his own group-thinking part, dismissed David Bohm’s work as
“juvenile deviationism,” going so far as to suggest that “if we can- not
disprove Bohm, then we must agree to ignore him” [Peat, 1997].) And obvious,
too, that you’re always “free to leave,” even if being “pursued by disasters”
to “drown in the dark sea of igno- rance” afterwards ... and that the public
image never properly represents the
true nature of the spiritual teacher or community?
Were common
sense to play a greater role, one might instead do the obvious, in evaluating
any particular guru-figure: simply talk to former disciples who have split from
the “master,” and ask them why they left! That latter approach, indeed, is the only way (short of published exposés) to
accurately gauge the character of the guru-figure and community.
The best way to learn about a
specific group is to locate a former member, or at least a former member’s
written ac- count (Hassan, 1990).
Minimal thought
applied to that subject would
further disclose that the
amount of perceived validity and “divine love” in the sage being evaluated at
the beginning of the disciple’s involvement or “testing period” has little
relation to his or her real character. In- deed, such differential would be far
greater than the difference in the degree of “perfection” seen in a potential
romantic mate on a first date, say, versus after a decade of marriage.
You would not,
unless you are a complete cad, hire a private investigator to quietly uncover
dirt on a prospective mate, when falling in love with her or him. Neither could
you objectively ask (or even covertly research)
the intrusive questions
suggested above
by Vaughan of any “holy sage” and
his or her organization, when you are already “falling in love” with them.
And then, where
those two ideas cross:
[Paulette Cooper] had in front of
her pages of detailed re- ports from another [alleged] cult operative.... He
had, for a short while, been very close to her, and pretended to be in love
with her....
The secret
agent told his superiors that on the outside
he was sympathetic [to her troubles] but inside he was laughing:
“Wouldn’t [Cooper’s depressed talk of suicide] be a great thing for
Scientology?” (Marshall, 1980).
As to Vaughan’s
suggested questions above, then: Even if you did ask them, you would truly have
to be born yesterday to think that you would ever get an open and honest
answer.
* * *
Jack Kornfield, years ago, penned a
landmark exposé for Yoga Journal. There,
he presented the results of his own research, dis- closing that thirty-four of
the fifty-three American yoga teachers whom he surveyed (64%) had had sex with
their students. Those indulgences encompassed preferences ranging from
heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, fetishist, exhibitionist and monogamist, to
polygamist.
How to react to
that? As both the people at Kripalu and the Dalai Lama figured out for
themselves through simple common sense, the proper response to father-figure
gurus and teachers who reportedly cannot keep their hands off their disciples
in spiritual incest is quite simple. That is, one must criticize them openly
and, if they will not change, pack one’s bags and leave.
Or, even better,
wisely send the teacher packing.
Yet, just when
we may be thinking that we have finally found a guru-figure, in the Dalai Lama,
who can actually see things even halfway clearly ... well, we find the same man
musing aloud that it may indeed be possible for great yogis such as Drukpa
Kunley to sleep with other men’s wives only for
their (wives’) benefit.
Smiling slightly, His Holiness
explained that Drukpa Kunley
could understand the long-term effects of his actions because he had attained
the nondual insight known as “One Taste.” All
experiences were the same to him: He could enjoy
[eat-
ing] excrement and urine just like
the finest food and wine (Wheeler, 1994).
Ken Wilber
himself, however, has again attained to the One Taste state of which the Dalai
Lama speaks so highly, thus alleg- edly being able to “understand the long-term
effects of his actions,” e.g., in endorsing Adi Da and Andrew Cohen. (No word
on Wilber’s preferences of fine wine versus urine, etc.) Those endorsements,
however, plus his continuing, insult-filled misrepresentations of David Bohm’s
brilliant work, absolutely prove that “choiceless awareness” cannot be a valid
basis for one’s allegedly “always be- having appropriately in every situation.”
Note also that even the Dalai Lama is thus guilty of romanticizing the
spiritual accom- plishments of persons whom he regards as being greater than
him- self. Indeed, he is probably doing that to a comparable degree as his own spiritual state is undoubtedly
overestimated by his most loyal followers.
Further regarding Kunley
himself:
There is little doubt that Drukpa
Kunley would have broken the incest taboo if he had thought that this might
serve his mother’s spiritual growth (Feuerstein, 1992).
Drukpa Kunley ... when asked by a
follower, Apa Gaypo, for a prayer to
strengthen his religious resolve, answered:
Drukpa Kunley’s penis head may stick,
Stick in a small vagina,
But tightness depends
upon the size of the penis.
Apa Gaypo’s urge to gain Buddhahood is strong, So strong,
But the scale
of his achievement depends upon the
strength of his devotion (French, 2003).
As prayers go, it’s certainly one of the more interesting....
Kunley’s
exploits included claims of his having slept with five thousand women—but
evidently no men—“for their spiritual bene- fit.” So here we have someone who
ostensibly drew no distinctions between excrement and urine, versus “the finest
food and wine.” That is, he potentially enjoyed both sets equally, for
experiencing everything—including his own thoughts, sensations and emotions
—as having the same “One Taste.” In other words,
he “experi-
enced” them with no division between
subject and object, and no recoiling from psychological engagement in those various
psychic relationships. And yet, like the strictly heterosexual Wilber,
he ob- viously still distinguished between men and women as sexual
partners, only indulging in the female of the species
in that regard. Very fishy, that—to allegedly not distinguish between one’s cu-
linary enjoyment of filth versus
appropriate foods, but to still
be
bound by largely
learned/cultural sexual preferences.
Feuerstein
gives many additional “fairy tales” of the violent “crazy wisdom” exploits of
Kunley and others. None of those myth- ic stories could possibly be literally
true. Yet, all of them have un- doubtedly been used, at one time or another, to
excuse the behav- iors of foolish individuals masquerading as sages, both past
and present.
Consider:
[Adi Da] likes to compare his work
to the crazy-wise teach- ings of some of the great adepts of the East. In
particular, he once remarked, “I am Drukpa Kunley This
is exactly what
I am in your time and place”
(Feuerstein, 1996).
* * *
Traditionally, in Asia, vows and
moral precepts have pro- tected teachers and students from sexual and other
forms of misconduct. In Japan, Tibet, India and Thailand, the pre- cepts
against harm by stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, or abuse of intoxicants are understood and followed by all mem- bers of the religious community....
In modern
America these rules
are often dispensed with, and neither TV preachers nor Eastern spiritual teachers have clear rules of behavior regarding
money, power and sex (Kornfield, 1993).
Yet
as we have seen, contrary
to the romantic belief that things are different in Asia: In Japan, local
girls throw rocks over the monas- tery walls, receiving ready responses to those “calling
cards.” (Such enticement,
though, is hardly needed, given the documented pro- pensity of monks there to
sneak out over the walls even without solicitation.) In Tibet, while
masturbation and oral sex are taboo, whores are okay as long as you pay for
their services yourself. In Thailand, with a population that is 95% Buddhist,
monks get their names in the papers for having been caught with pornography,
sexual paraphernalia, and more than
one woman at a time. And that publicity is even independent of their Rajneesh-like collections of vintage cars, some of which were obtained via the
misuse of temple funds. (Ironically, Kornfield himself practiced meditation “in
the remote jungles of Thailand” under the guru Ajahn Chah in the early ’70s [Schwartz, 1996]. Perhaps the jungles there are
sim- ply not “where the action is,” but in any case, the idea that pre- cepts
are in general followed there or elsewhere in the East “by all members of the
religious community” in no way matches the facts, as we have repeatedly seen.
For more of the same purely wishful thinking regarding “Eastern gurus,” see
Andrew Harvey’s [2000] conversation with Ken
Wilber.)
And things
could be different in contemporary India, building upon the constraints
“obeyed” by Ramakrishna and the like? Sad- ly, no:
That little seven year old is a real Lolita. She’s the best lay in the ashram (in Mehta,
1979).
Or, as one
five-year-old boy in Rajneesh’s Poona center com- plained: “Fuck, fuck, fuck,
all we ever do is fuck!”
At least one
“older and wiser” six-year-old girl in the same community, however,
saw things from a more adult perspective; for she
delighted in grabbing men’s genitals
through their robes. Another offered to suck the penis of every man she saw in the public showers (Franklin, 1992).
Of course, that
situation did not improve upon Rajneesh’s messianic move to America,
where one could easily find three-year-
old girls sobbing their hearts out to their mothers:
None of the boys will fuck me!. It’s
not fair! Just because I
wear diapers they won’t fuck me.
They said I’m a baby! (in Franklin, 1992).
To that, the
mother’s patient response was simply an encour- agement to her child to stop
wetting herself at night, at which point
she would not have to wear diapers anymore.
With the
additional penchant of early-teenage girls in Raj- neesh’s America for sleeping
with men twice their age, Franklin went on to note:
Scores of ranch swamis would have
been considered child molesters out in the world.
Consider also
the relevant problem of Tibetan lamas taking private female consorts in spite
of their public vows of celibacy— reported by June Campbell on the basis of her
own experience as such a consort to a universally revered lama. That
rule-breaking was never lessened by tradition, hierarchy or lineage:
[W]hile a lama would, to all intents
and purposes, be viewed publicly as a celibate monk, in reality he was frequently sex- ually active, but his
activities were highly secret (Campbell, 1996; italics added).
Further, note
again that Chögyam Trungpa’s teachings and behaviors, for one, were verified as
authentic not merely by the (disillusioned, late) student Butterfield but by the head of his own Nyingma School. Indeed,
by that verification, his behaviors were exactly in accord with that
1800-year-old tradition, dating back to Milarepa. Given that endorsement, it
was obviously for working within the
alleged “checks and balances” of his tradition, not for being freed of them
when emigrating to the West, that Trungpa had people publicly stripped and
humiliated. From the same “obe- dient following” of selected traditional
rules—i.e., of only the ones which they felt like obeying,
without meaningful censure
for violat- ing others—his
successor again infected his disciples with AIDS, criminally believing that God
would protect them.
Likewise,
consider the reported non-effect on Trungpa when the Sixteenth Karmapa came to
America in 1974:
It had been six
years since His Holiness and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche had last seen each other,
and the Kar- mapa had doubtless heard lots of stories, some true, some
exaggerated, about how this former monk had immersed himself in the Western
world. But now as they met His Holi- ness smiled broadly, and it was clear that
everything was all right (Fields, 1992).
Additional
research, though, discloses that the same Karmapa actually later
“non-recognized” Trungpa. Further, the Dalai Lama, too, pointedly canceled a
scheduled visit to Trungpa’s community from his itinerary during his first,
historic tour of America in the 1970s (Clark, 1980). Part of the motivation for
that cancellation no doubt arose from the suggestion, by an officer in
Trungpa’s para- noid, submachine-gun toting organization, that (in all
seriousness) the Dalai Lama was conspiring to assassinate the Karmapa.
Neither of
those quiet lamaic signs of disapproval, of course, did anything to keep
Trungpa in check from making additional “mistakes.” But it is still a little
bit comforting to know that those two lamas at least had some sense left in
them. For, one can easily contrast even that ridiculously mild censure with
others who have touted Trungpa’s teachings and sangha as being the first foray of “authentic Tibetan Buddhism”
into America (Bharati, 1974).
Acharya
Reginald Ray is another of Chögyam Trungpa’s con-
temporary followers. He is thus undoubtedly familiar with the de- tails of his
“principal teacher’s” life. He therefore had this to say regarding the effect
of traditional “checks and balances” on the be- haviors of gurus and their ilk:
In Tibet, even the tulkus—these very well-trained people—
were surrounded by people who were watching them all the time. Even the
ordinary village people knew what was ap- propriate behavior and what wasn’t.
If a guy went off, he’d be nailed (in
Caplan, 2001).
Yet, in spite
of such claimed watchfulness and the supposed punishment for “going off”
vouched for by Ray, Trungpa managed to sleep with women “since he was
thirteen,” actually getting one pregnant before having left Tibet, while still
under a vow of celi- bacy. He further obviously suffered no discipline in
response to that, from “ordinary village people” or otherwise, sufficient to
get him to stop that blatantly “inappropriate behavior.” In short, in no way
did he get “nailed” for that.
One wishes,
truly, that there was a visible correlation between the documented realities
of situations like that, and the
distortions which are presented to the Western public as factual by respected,
life-long “experts.”
While I do not know what people mean
when they claim that everyone is entitled
to his own opinion, I do know that no one
has a right to be wrong in his facts (Askenasy, 1978).
It was,
further, not merely Trungpa himself who was trans- planted into the West. More
importantly, the closed communities, feudal/hierarchical power structures and
“infallibility of the guru” teachings of his ancient Tibetan tradition formed
the basis for his own little spiritual “kingdom” in Boulder (Marin, 1995). And
it is those structures, not any
excessive partying per se, which
create the
“superintendent/guard/prisoner” environment which ruins peo- ple’s lives just
as much in non-“crazy wisdom”
surroundings as it does in “uncontrolled” contexts such as Chögyam’s.
It is true that
Trungpa (1981), for one, gave at least lip
service to encouraging “an attitude of constant questioning, rather than
ignoring our intelligence.” Butterfield’s descriptions of the inter- view
process undergone during his own admission as a student, however, show that one
could not become a member of Trungpa’s community without buying into the full
set of ridiculous supersti- tions. Consider also Merwin’s fate, when he
attempted to question rather than going blindly along with the dictates of the
guru and his group-thinking community. It is issues like these, not half-
baked, pulled-out-of-thin-air theory, which matter in evaluating the potential for harm present in any
“true sangha.”
Note further
that, by Feuerstein’s own testimony, Drukpa Kunley’s sexual exploits “did fly
in the face of custom and propri- ety.” That is, his “crazy wisdom” behaviors were not constrained by the agrarian
society in which he lived.
Obviously,
then, after all that, neither social nor cultural nor psychological-development
variations can account for the “differ- ence” between guru-disciple
relationships as practiced in the East versus the West. Rather, when it comes
to the demand for blind obedience, and to the reported abuse of sex and power,
the prob- lems and alleged abuses exist, and
have always existed, just as surely “on the other side of the pond” as they
do in North America. (Cf. Ramakrishna, and the history of Zen and of
lama-sexing, child-torturing Tibetan
Buddhism.)
Persons looking
to account for a non-existent difference be- tween East and West in all this
further generally ignore the natu- ral effect of the passage of time on the
involved individuals. Some- one like Trungpa was going to become increasingly self-destructive
as the years went by regardless, for
his childhood pains and other- wise. It was his own psychology, not “the West,”
which gave him license to drink himself into an early grave.
Further, being worshiped by one’s disciples
as a “god” for years on end would go to one’s head in the
East just as much as in the West. It would also predictably result in an
increasing feeling that one could get away with anything, regardless of whether
or not the surrounding society and
culture had become more liberal at the same time.
If one goes
from the East to the West, then, being worshiped equally in both as time goes
by, one’s increasing disregard for moral rules in that
later
West can in no way be reduced
to a simple surrounding cultural or social matrix phenomenon.
Rather, the bulk of that can be accounted for simply on the basis of the afore-
mentioned grandiose inflation, fuelled by the willing
obedience and obeisance of
one’s close, devoted followers.
Put more
bluntly: Although power corrupts, it also takes time to thus corrupt. If other things are changing simultaneously
with that passage of time, it may be easy to mistake them for the cause of the
corruption. For nearly every guru-figure one could name, however, there was a
time early in his (or her) life when he could have been regarded as exhibiting
“impeccable integrity”; a later time when he allegedly began breaking rules
which hurt others; and a yet later time when he had hurt so many people that
his al- leged sins began to find him out. Some such figures lived their en-
tire lives in the West, some came to the West from the East, and some spent their
entire lives in the agrarian East. For the latter, nothing of the
“unconstrained” West can be regarded as the cause of their reported misdeeds;
and yet the alleged corruption in the claimed misuse of power and sexuality
happened all the same.
Likewise,
regarding “tradition”: Aside from Rajneesh, Sai Baba, the Caddys, Aurobindo,
Ramana Maharshi, Ananda Moyi Ma and
Ammachi (whom we shall soon meet)—plus L. Ron Hub- bard and Werner Erhard—every
other spiritual leader we have considered herein came from within a recognized
teaching lineage. (Aurobindo might even claim Vivekananda as a teacher.) Yet,
that has clearly done nothing to keep them in check, or even to en- sure/test
that they were anywhere near as enlightened as they claimed to be.
Sex between clergymen and boys is by
no means a uniquely Catholic phenomenon ... it’s been going on in Buddhist mon-
asteries in Asia for centuries.
“Of course,
this is against the Buddhist canon,” [Dr.] Leonard Zwilling [said] “but it has
been common in Tibet, China, Japan and elsewhere.
“In fact,
when the Jesuits
arrived in China
and Japan in the 16th century, they were horrified
by the formalized rela- tionships between Buddhist monks and novices who were
still children” (Siemon-Netto, 2002).
* * *
After all that, it is almost a
relief to find an actual instance of Eastern rules being “followed by all
members of the religious com- munity,” as Kornfield and others claim:
The real temptation many men face
when they come here [to a Thai Buddhist forest monastery] is masturbation. You
are not supposed to do it. Once you have been ordained, if you break this precept you must come and confess
it to the senior monk. It’s
worse if you are a bhikkhu [monk].
Then a meet- ing of the sangha is
required and penance must be handed down. The guilty monk has to sit at the end
of the food line. For seven days no one can do anything for him. It’s really
embarrassing. I remember one fairly senior monk had a seri- ous problem with
this. Whenever the villagers came in to bring us food in the morning, they
would see him sitting at the bottom of the line and laugh (Ward, 1998).
It is one thing
for monasteries to focus on humiliating their residents for such a trivial
activity—which surely affects, for harm or good, no one but the individual
practitioners in the privacy of their own bedrooms, and should hardly merit a meeting of the en- tire community to
discuss it. It is quite another, however, for them (or their “big city”
counterparts) to overlook or attempt to cover up embezzlement, the use of
prostitutes, and the indulgence in necro- philia and karaoke, etc., on the part
of their other residents. In- deed, the situation is no different, in that
regard, than one finds with the horrendous betrayals of trust
reported within the Catholic
Church, worldwide. Such major alleged abuses are then left to be brought out by muck-raking journalists whose conscience
has evi-
dently not yet been completely dulled by blind adherence to a set of
archaic precepts.
One further
cannot help but note that Buddhism has sur- passed even the Catholic Church,
here, in terms of the need for confession (to one’s superiors) and humiliating public penance, for even ridiculously
minor “sins.” And that Church is by no means an easy one to surpass, in terms
of guilt and ignorance:
Even today, the official teaching of
the Roman Catholic Church holds masturbation to be a mortal sin [i.e., one
“pun- ishable by eternal damnation, unless one repented in confes- sion”],
though few serious theologians consider it a cause for the loss of heaven
(Berry and Renner, 2004).
* * *
Interestingly, had Rajneesh and his
inner circle of followers not gone over a line with their public bioterrorism
activities, etc., his ashrams would still be viewed today as fine models of how
spiri- tual communities should be run—as J. Donald Walters’ Ananda was, for
example, prior to his own disgrace. That is in spite of the fact that, as early
as 1979, the National Institute of Mental Health had been warned that
Rajneesh’s Poona ashram might become “another Jonestown” (Gordon, 1987).
(Likewise, the San Francisco Zen Center had
“long [been] thought of as the very model of a mod- ern Zen center,” prior to the
“Apocalypse” following from the public
airing of Richard Baker’s hitherto-private reported activities there [Fields,
1992].)
Until Rajneesh spoke publicly, the
only charges pending against him or anyone else on the ranch were related to
im- migration fraud. If he hadn’t exposed Sheela’s wrongdoings, the authorities
would probably never have found informants to testify, let alone obtained
convictions on wiretapping, poi- soning, and arson. And if Rajneesh hadn’t
tried to flee the country, both he and his commune would in all likelihood still have been in Oregon (Gordon, 1987).
The composition
of that same ex-ashram is of significant in- terest:
According to the Oregon University
survey, 11% of the [Raj- neeshpuram] commune members
had postgraduate degrees
in psychology or psychiatry and
another 11% had B.A.’s in the field (Fitzgerald, 1986).
Thus, nearly
one-quarter of the residents at Rajneeshpuram were trained psychologists. That
documented fact does nothing to increase one’s confidence in the ability of the
profession to spot openly pathological behavior in contexts where its members have a vested interest. For, while most
members of the Rajneesh commu- nity were not aware of the more grossly illegal
activities going on there until after the fact, Sheela’s own “duchy” included
suppres- sion of any “negativity.” In her world, further, even constructive
criticism qualified as that, and was punished accordingly. Of course, all that
one gets out of that, other than an enforced obedi- ence, is a superficially
“happy” community of people—as in the Maharishi’s ideal society—reminding one
too much of the Python sketch involving an unhappy man sentenced to hang by the
neck (or meditate) “until he cheers up.”
The
sociological studies of safely distant, academic “Rajneesh watchers,” etc.,
would fall into the same category of deep concern. Indeed, for such scholars,
publishers of exposés, by Milne for ex- ample, have been deemed worthy of
denigration as “schlockmeis- ters” (cf. Palmer and Sharma, 1993).
Nor were
Bhagwan’s sannyasin psychologists
merely at the bottom of the barrel in their professional abilities or standing:
The “Hollywood crew” [included] the
best-known therapists in town—all of them had taken sannyas (Strelley, 1987).
Rajneesh, interestingly, was actually regarded
as “the intellec- tual’s guru”: “[T]he educational
level of the followers of Rajneesh was far greater than most of the rest of the
population” (Oakes, 1997).
An astounding number of therapists
and leaders of the hu- man potential movement are current or former disciples
of Bhagwan’s, although few, if any of them, publicly acknowl- edge it
(Franklin, 1992).
Many of these therapists had the
sense, before they came to Poona, that Rajneesh was at least a master
therapist, that his work might represent the next step in the evolution of
psychotherapy (Gordon, 1987).
Those, of
course, are the same people who decide, through the peer review process and as
a “community of competent, intersub- jective interpreters,” what constitutes
truth within humanistic psychology. The same peer-adjudication of truth
naturally occurs within consciousness studies in general, influenced by Wilber
and his colleagues, for example.
Interestingly,
from the early ’70s until the collapse of his em- pire and IRS-inspired flight
into Mexico in 1991, Werner Erhard reigned as the “guru of the human potential
movement.” Indeed, even in Anthony, Ecker and Wilber’s near-worthless (1987) Spiri- tual Choices, the interview
questions (led by John Welwood) put to Erhard centered only on whether est
training granted an “enlight- enment” comparable to that purportedly realized
through tradi- tional spiritual disciplines. That is, there was not even the
slight- est whisper of any concern expressed regarding its safety, in spite of
those authors’ own later characterization of the interview as be- ing “spirited.”
(The interview itself was conducted in 1981—half a dozen years after Brewer’s [1975] exposé of the alleged negative effects
reportedly experienced by various est participants.)
Wilber has, in
the past, sat on the Board of Editors of The
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, as have Ram Dass, Dr. Her- bert V.
Guenther, Ph.D., and “the best stripper in town,” Chögyam Trungpa. Current
members of that board include Michael Murphy, who again genuinely believes (1992) that
Ramakrishna’s spine lengthened during his Hanuman sadhana.
Murphy is “the
leading integral theorist of his generation,” ac- cording to Wilber’s Integral
Naked (2005) website.
Also on the JTP
board is one Mr. Paul Clemens, whose Blue Dolphin publishing company catalog
contains books by authors who can
(they believe) literally hear God and Jesus speaking to them, and literally converse
with leprechauns—the latter existing,
fractal-like, in the “third-and-a-half dimension.” None of those are
financially lucrative best-sellers, which could then perhaps have been excused
as being published only for their dollar value.
Note further:
The above book on leprechauns, by the imagina- tive Tanis Helliwell, was
actually endorsed by Jean Houston, the former president of the Association of Humanistic Psychology. In- deed,
she there credited Helliwell with being a “deep seer.”
Houston (1997) has, at other times, functioned as a
non-guru to the White House:
For almost a year and a half, I had
served as a kind of intel- lectual sparring partner for First Lady Hillary Rodham
Clin- ton, helping her focus ideas for the book she was writing.
A report that
the First Lady and I had engaged in an imaginative exercise in which we
reflected on what Eleanor Roosevelt might have said about building a better
society for our children sent the media scurrying for colorful copy. “Sé-
ance!” the front pages of the newspapers shouted. “Witch- craft!” And even that
most dreaded of all epithets, “Guru!”
Needless to
say, the distortions both embarrassed Mrs. Clinton and played havoc with my
life and career. Virtually every newspaper and news magazine in the world
carried the stories, the facts hugely
distorted, and liberally dosed with snickering asides by reporters who never
bothered to find out anything about me or my work.
As a result of
this public ridicule, I found my reputation for thirty years of good work in
the service of human better- ment strained so badly that lectures were canceled
by nerv- ous sponsors and research grants
were withdrawn. I felt that I had gone overnight from being
regarded as a respected pio- neer on the frontier of human capacities research
to a laugh- able representative of the flaky fringe....
What was it
that turned the evening news into an In- quisition?
I suspect
that the answer
lies in two great phobias—fear of the rising power of women
and fear of the power of imagi- nation and inner realities.
A “laughable
representative of the flaky fringe” ... as opposed to being a “respected
pioneer” in the field of humanistic psychol- ogy. There is, of course, no
meaningful difference between the two categories.
Autobiographical
claims on the part of Houston include sup- posed childhood friendships with
both Albert Einstein and Teil- hard de Chardin, and a status as Margaret Mead’s
adopted daugh- ter. (Mead also served as the President of the Board of
Directors of the Foundation for Mind Research [Houston, 1982].)
As Advisor to UNICEF in human and
cultural development, [Jean] has worked to implement some of their extensive
edu- cational and health programs, primarily in Myanmar [Bur- ma] and
Bangladesh (Houston, 2006).
Houston’s own (1982) teachings have included the following wisdom:
I have been known to begin seminars
by asking people to tell each other three outrageous lies! The resistance that
some people experience to such a suggestion may be indicative of the extremely
literal mind-set that results from an accul- turation that worships “the fact”
and logical proof.
Houston’s
husband, Robert Masters, by his own “About the Author” testimony, is a “leading
pioneer of modern consciousness research,” “one of the founders of the Human
Potentials Move- ment” ... and former director of the Library of Sex Research.
Much of his “Work” (always capitalized) in the non-library regard has centered
around Sekhmet, an Egyptian goddess possessing the head of a lioness and the
body of a woman—ostensible a “Gateway to alien realms” of consciousness via the
raising of the kundalini energy. The worldview within which Masters’ (1991)
Egyptian metaphysics functions includes the following ideas:
The “Gods” of Chaos ordinarily
“ascend” only to the realm of the KHU [the “fourth most subtle of the Five Bodies,”
cf. auras], when a “black magic” is practiced. However, some of the most potent
sometimes invade the SÂHU [the “highest” of
the Five Bodies] so that even the holiest of men or women is not secure from
them. Also, the most powerful of black magicians can work with Metaeidolons
representing the Ur- Gods of Chaos at this level, thus effecting the most
potent evil.
Later in the
same book, Masters expounds further on his view of reality:
You can learn to extract from
another body a [cf. astral] Double of
that body and interact with it. In
fact, this is what, at the lowest level of psychic development, a
psychic does, whether for healing, for defense against psychic attack, or in an
unscrupulous way to attack by psychic means.
In
1972, John Lennon
blurbed for Masters
and Houston’s
Mind Games, saying:
I have read three important and
revolutionary books in the last three years: Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit, Arthur Janov’s Pri-
mal
Scream, and now Mind Games. I suggest you read and experience them.
The book itself
is simply a series of exercises, done in groups, for entering altered states of
consciousness. It does, however, aim for the creation of a “Group Spirit” by “a
version of a method known and
practiced for thousands of years in Tibet, where such entities are known as
thought-forms, or tulpas.”
What caliber of
thought, then, would you expect from a group of people among whom Houston is
one of the level-headed, under- stated, thoughtful ones? What would you expect
the lesser lights of the “profession” to look like? Would it surprise you to find that they seem to genuinely
believe that the voices they hear, and the elfish beings they see, are
real?
You may start
out taking transpersonal/integral/parapsycho- logical claims seriously, as David
Lane, John Horgan, Susan Blackmore and I once did. And there is nothing so very
wrong with that, up to a point. For, each one of us, at one stage or another in
our lives, has committed to mistaken ideals and perspectives sim- ply for not
knowing any better, and for believing far too much of what we were told by
people whom we trusted to have done at least
minimally satisfactory research and vetting of their own be- liefs and purported abilities. With regard to transpersonal, integral and parapsychological claims,
however, if you simply keep reading and thinking widely, beyond the field
itself, the transition from believer to skeptic is unavoidable.
Conversely, to
exist for decades in those fields as a member in good standing is a sure sign
that one is relying more on the part of one’s brain that is responsible for
mere wishful thinking, than on the section which is to credit for coherent,
rational analysis.
Speaking of
which: Dr. Roger Walsh is another respected member of the JTP board. He is also
on the Board of Editors of the Journal of
Consciousness Studies. Plus, he is another founding member of the Integral
Institute, who has compared Wilber’s (1995)
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality to Hegel’s work in its scope. Walsh has recently stated, with an absurd
degree of exaggeration:
Ken
Wilber is one of the greatest philosophers of this century and arguably the greatest
theoretical psychologist of all time (IntegralNaked,
2004).
Walsh actually
teaches philosophy (among sundry other sub- jects) at the University of
California at Irvine, and might therefore claim some measure of informed
expertise in voicing the above opinion. Still, such puffery surely reminds one
far too much of Wil- ber’s own pontifications as to whom he imagines the top
shabd yogis, Realizers, or “strongest dinosaurs” to be.
Frances
Vaughan, incidentally, is Roger Walsh’s wife. Both are close friends of Ken Wilber—and founding members of the In-
tegral Institute—to the point of having introduced him to his sec- ond wife.
Together, Walsh and Vaughan (1988) edited a book of selections from Helen
Schucman’s A Course in Miracles (ACIM)—
attempted pithy sermons which were purportedly channeled from Lord Jesus Christ
in 1965.
Wilber,
interestingly, had this to say (in Klimo, 1998)
about the Course:
I’m not saying that there was not
some transcendental in- sight involved and that Helen probably felt that it was
cer- tainly beyond her day-to-day self. I
think that’s true [italics added]. But there’s much more of Helen in the Course than I first thought. It’s
not all pure information, there’s
a lot of
noise that gets in. I also found that if you look at Helen’s own poetry, you’re initially very hard
pressed to find any differ- ence between that and the Course.
Yes indeed.
And, why might that “non-difference” be? The
an- swer is obvious to anyone who isn’t desperately trying to find spiri-
tuality and paranormality in what can much more reasonably be viewed as simply one woman’s overactive imagination and inability to distinguish reality from her
own fantasies.
Or do you believe that Jesus Christ spoke
directly to Helen Schuchman in the mid-’60s, dictating over a thousand
pages of gar- den-variety New Age musings to her?
Regardless,
anyone who was actually impressed with ACIM to the point of compiling a “best
of” from it that makes Andrew Cohen’s books look wise and insightful by
comparison, should think more than
twice before considering himself to be in a posi- tion to rank the world’s
great philosophers. That applies, I think, even if the person in question is a peer reviewer amongst a field of
comparably fine “scholars.”
The same compiled
book was endorsed
as “marvelous in-
spired and profound” by Willis Harman,
former president of the
Institute of Noetic Sciences. In a
similar vein, Walsh and Vaughan’s (1993)
anthology, Paths Beyond Ego, has a
foreword written by John E. Mack, M.D.—Harvard’s now-late, laughably credulous
alien abduction expert (Carroll, 2004). As
if to close the circle, the foreword for Walsh’s (1999)
Essential Spirituality was written by
the Dalai Lama, and is dedicated to Judith Skutch Whitson—president of the
Foundation for Inner Peace, publisher of
A Course in Miracles.
Of that same
uninspiring book, Ken Wilber blurbed: “The field of spiritual books has been
looking for its own Lewis Thomas or Carl Sagan, and I believe Roger Walsh may
be that one.” Sagan, however, was not merely a cogent popularizer of serious
science, but also one of the world’s more prominent skeptics, who would not for a moment have taken ACIM
seriously. Any “Carl Sagan of spir- ituality” would be one who would keep
asking pointed questions and demanding properly
conducted research ... at which
point even the most
hitherto-certain claims of the transpersonal/integral field crumble rapidly
into a pile of fairy dust.
As to the
psychological profession in general, Storr (1996)
has demonstrated that both Freud and Jung created personality cults
—initially populated by many
other respected psychological profes- sionals—around themselves:
Freud’s dogmatism and intolerance of
disagreement led to the departure of many colleagues, including Adler, Stekel,
Jung, and eventually Rank and Ferenczi, from the psycho- analytic movement.
When his associates remained faithful disciples, Freud gave them his approval;
but when they dis- agreed, he abused them, or accused them of being mentally
ill. Adler was described by Freud as paranoiac, Stekel as un- bearable and a
louse; Jung as brutal and sanctimonious.
What is remarkable about Freud’s
leadership of the psycho- analytic movement is that although he quite clearly
did not believe in any kind of supernatural creator, he adopted al- most
without exception the strategies of those who did. In ef- fect he treated his
own theories as if they were a personal revelation granted to him by God and
demanded that others should accord to them the reverence which the sacred word
usually commands (R. Webster, 1990).
And as we have
seen, leading professionals in humanistic psy- chology thought that Rajneesh
was “at least a master therapist.” (Likewise, “Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt
therapy, defended [L. Ron] Hubbard’s early work ... and briefly received
Dianetic coun- seling” [Atack, 1990].) Comparably,
transpersonal and integral psychologists today regard Ken Wilber as a rare
genius and a com- passionate bodhisattva.
Think about all
of that before you feel obliged to take any of their other ideas or analyses
seriously.
Interestingly,
Richard Price had actually visited and subse- quently repudiated Rajneesh’s
India ashram in the ’70s. (Price was
one of the co-founders of the humanistic potential Esalen commu- nity, that
“hotbed of sexual experimentation” located three hours south of San Francisco.)
That distancing, however, was strictly for the violence he observed in their
encounter groups, not for any stated comprehension of the potential for
pathological problems which exists inside every closed society.
Price actually
noted a style of “manipulating group pressure to force conformity” (Fitzgerald, 1986) in
those encounter groups, in his formal letter of protest sent to the ashram
staff and to Raj- neesh himself. One will, however, find that manipulation in every ashram setting, with or without
encounter groups. In any case, Price’s objections were not directed at the
ashram in general, which environment
he fully enjoyed. Yet that “enjoyable” commu- nity is exactly where the real
pathologies later manifested.
Price and
Murphy’s Esalen, like Findhorn, is itself a relatively safe community. Or
“safe,” at least, when not being haunted by fu- ture mass murderers:
Esalen was, at this time [i.e.,
August of 1969], just coming into vogue as a “growth center”. Obviously [Charles]
Man-
son felt Esalen a prime place to
espouse his philosophies. It is
unknown whether he had been there on prior occasions, those involved in the
Institute refusing to even acknowledge his visits there....
Manson would
tell Paul Watkins ... that while at Big Sur
he had gone “to Esalen and played his guitar for a bunch of people
who were supposed to be the top people there [Mur- phy? Price?], and they rejected his music” just
three days
before the Tate murders (Bugliosi and Gentry, 1974).
Prior to that,
the Beach Boys had recorded (in September of 1968) one of Manson’s songs,
“Never Learn Not To Love,” for their 20/20
album. Manson and his Family had actually lived in (drummer) Dennis Wilson’s house in 1968-9. It was Dennis himself who had once
taken Manson to Roman Polanski’s house, at which the murder of the latter’s
wife (i.e., centerfold Sharon Tate) and others later occurred.
Between that
and Mike Love’s interest in the Maharishi, that the Boys managed to sustain any “good vibrations” at all is nothing
short of amazing. (The Maharishi actually toured with the Beach Boys in 1968,
to the complete disinterest of their fans, causing the tour to be cancelled
halfway through, already half a million dollars in debt [Kent, 2001].)
* * *
The inner circle [in Jetsunma’s
ashram] was always careful to protect newcomers from the darker
side of the center—and the
things they would not be able to comprehend correctly
(Sherrill, 2000; italics added).
The
present book is, of course,
exactly an attempt
to provide a rela-
tively comprehensive disclosure about what reportedly goes on be- hind the
ashram gates. That is, it is a cataloging of the alleged ac- tions which one
would not “comprehend correctly” if one were to find out about them too soon in
one’s involvement with any group. Informed decisions may then be made regarding
one’s participation in our
world’s nontraditional and traditional spiritual organiza- tions.
Of course, each
new approach which comes along may be the “one clean spiritual path” whose
guru-figure is everything he or she
claims to be, with an inner circle of disciples who care nothing for their own
power or respect, and simply want to make the world a better place by first
changing themselves.
And if you buy
that, I’ve got an ashram in Florida I’d like to sell you ... because that’s exactly what I once thought SRF was. And yet, even the holy Tara Mata’s
attitude toward other, lower members of that compassionate and “God-guided”
society em- braced the totalitarian ideal:
In an organization, no one has a
right even to think except the
members of the Board of Directors (in Walters, 2002).
Comparably, as
Thomas Doyle (2002) observed, with regard to the Catholic Church:
There is a solid principle in
political science that says the governing elite of an organization will
eventually think it is the
organization.
No surprise,
then, that exactly the same principle would apply to our world’s nontraditional
religious organizations, in their ash- rams and otherwise. How could it not?
‘Tis simply human nature.
Interestingly,
devotees who tire of SRF and Yogananda fre- quently end up following Sai Baba,
Chinmoy, or the “hugging ava- tar” Mata Amritanandamayi (Ammachi).
Many people have called Amma[chi] a
saint or sage and be- lieve that she is a great master, a reincarnation of
Divine Mother, Krishna, Christ, Buddha, or Ramakrishna. When
asked if she believes this about
herself, she responded that she basically did not want to claim anything or
that she was any particular incarnation of a god or goddess (Cornell, 2001).
And yet—
“The Mother of Immortal Bliss”
[i.e., Amritanandamayi] claims to be the living manifestation of all the divine
god- desses of the Hindu pantheon combined (Macdonald,
2003).
In presenting
Amma with the Gandhi-King Award for Non- Violence in 2002, the Jane
Goodall further reportedly characterized her as being “God’s love in a human body” (in Ammachi, 2004).
Understandably—or not—then,
Amritananda[mayi] went underground
in 1983 when the po- lice confronted about twenty-six women who claimed to be
possessed by gods and goddesses (Premanand, 1994).
Sarah
Macdonald’s (2003) clear-eyed experiences
with Amma- chi in darshan leave one
further wondering:
Amid the push, shove, knee-crunch
and head-yank I concen- trate on my question.
“What is my purpose,
what does God want from me?”
Again, the
flash of the nose ring, the gentle hold of the neck and the whisper in the ear.
The answer, my purpose in life is:
“rootoongarootoongarootoongarootoongarootoongaroo- toonga.”
My shoulder
nearly dislocated by the yank out of the Mother’s midst, I wait for a vision.
Is the purpose of my life to root?
* * *
One can again always find apologists
for whom allegedly abusive gurus/teachers are only “a fraction of a percentage”
(i.e., less than 1%) of the whole. To the same “compassionate experts,” students
attract to themselves the teachers and guru-figures they deserve:
In almost all cases, the sincere
student is with a corrupt teacher because he or she has areas of blindness that
are ei- ther getting fed or reflected by the teacher....
When I encounter
someone who argues vehemently against the student-teacher relationship, almost
inevitably they are unconsciously trying to heal something still unset- tled
either in their present life or in some former circum- stance....
It has been
suggested that false prophets are decoys to deter the masses of less determined
seekers so that only those who are serious enough to pay the price for true
mas- tery will discover it (Caplan, 2002).
But did the
“true prophet” Ramakrishna’s (or Sai Baba’s) young male disciples, faced with
the alleged sexual interests of those gurus, and going along with them because
they believed that their “God in the flesh” wanted them to, “bring that upon
them- selves”? Was David Bohm’s brutal mistreatment at the hands of the “authentic sage” Krishnamurti a
necessary price to pay for his own “true mastery”? (In Bohm’s case, that
cruelty was the primary component inducing his suicide-considering nervous
breakdown. It ultimately led to electroshock therapy, not to any greater
enlight- enment at the hands of the “World Teacher.”)
The
Wilber-admiring Caplan does not “name names” in her evaluations of “decoys” and
her spirited defense of the hierarchical guru-disciple relationship in
general—though she does consider 95% (her figure) of gurus to not be worth
following. However, it is quite obvious from the content
of her writings and of the inter-
views within them that she and her
interviewees specifically re- gard Krishnamurti, Aurobindo, Meher Baba,
Trungpa, Muktan- anda, Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati and Andrew Cohen as being “au-
thentic sages.”
Interestingly,
Ram Dass’ experiences with Bhagavati (in her “Joya” days, with “no escape
clause”) did not prevent Caplan from interviewing both of them in the same
(2002) book. She further did that without giving any indication that “Ma” is
anything less than (in Caplan’s own words) “an internationally respected
spiritual teacher, as well as a forerunner in the global fight for human rights and religious freedom.” Bhagavati
has received equally posi- tive coverage, independent of Dass’ well-known
claims regarding her past, in Cohen’s (2001)
What Is Enlightenment? magazine.
Conversely, in Caplan’s view, it could apparently only be other, unspecified
“bad apples” who are guilty of messing up their naïve followers’ lives, not any
of these “compassionate sages.”
Perspectives
such as that are again sadly what passes for wis- dom in today’s spiritual
marketplace. One then follows such advice only at one’s own peril. After all,
if these “experts” are wrong, it is your life
that will be at risk of being shattered, not theirs.
Interestingly,
Caplan’s largely misled (2002) book has been hyperbolically endorsed by the
Trungpa-following Welwood as be- ing “the most comprehensive, lucid,
well-argued, utterly straight- forward and honest
work on the whole guru question that there is.” Caplan herself is a devoted disciple
of Lee Lozowick, the latter of whom has a “special relationship” with Adi Da,
and is a friend of Andrew Cohen (Rawlinson, 1997). Lozowick himself, however,
has been critiqued by at least one former disciple, as follows:
I think he is deluding himself when
he claims to be fully enlightened. During public gatherings he would constantly
use four-letter words, ramble on
about sex and anal fixa- tions, and generally behave and speak in a totally
asinine way (in Feuerstein, 1992).
Of his
prolific, if unknown, rock band (“Liars, Gods, and Beg- gars”), Lozowick has
predicted: “LGB will be bigger than the Beat- les” (Rawlinson, 1997).
And thus, “more popular than Jesus Christ,”
too.
The wise
Lozowick is further of the opinion that Sai Baba is a “master [of] the physics
of form,” i.e., that the latter’s purported materializations of vibhuti and the like are genuine (Caplan,
2001). It is more than ironic, then,
that both of Caplan’s relevant books are concerned in significant part with how
to distinguish “authentic” guru-figures from “decoys.”
* * *
After all that, are “delusions of
enlightenment” alright? Some would ridiculously say so:
Better these people should think
they’re enlightened, which is a wonderful aspiration, than be robbing stores or
taking heroin or beating their wives or kicking their dogs. I think that one of
the most wonderful things is the delusion of enlightenment, even if it is a
delusion. At least it represents an aspiration that is better than an
aspiration to be a mur- derer (Joan Halifax, in [Caplan, 2001]).
But, are the
“best” of history’s “sages” really better than our world’s bank robbers, drug
addicts, wife abusers or animal mis- treaters? Are they not arguably worse?
For, note that more than one of them has allegedly misused (i.e., effectively
stolen) temple funds, or feasted while his most devoted followers starved, thus
exhibiting less moral sense than the average bank robber. (Steal- ing from a
church or from one’s friends and admirers, after all, has got to be morally
worse than stealing
from a faceless corporation or a bank.)
In the same
vein, more than one has been accused of physi- cally beating or otherwise
brutally oppressing his or her spouse. As the Mill
Valley Record (Colin, et al., 1985)
reported:
On one occasion during a raucous
party at the church sanc- tuary in Clear Lake, eyewitnesses say they saw [Adi
Da] push his wife Nina down a flight of stairs. They also claim that during
that party Jones pulled a sizable hunk of hair from her head.
[Rajneesh] wasn’t the Master
[Deeksha had] fallen in love with. She’d witnessed him beating Vivek once, she
swore (Franklin, 1992).
Recall also
Swami Rama reportedly kicking women in the but-
tocks. And further:
Chögyam Trungpa wrote that Marpa,
the tenth-century Ti- betan guru, “lost his temper and beat people.” Marpa is
also considered an incarnate Buddha, the spiritual father of Ti- bet’s greatest
yogi Milarepa. Maybe his beatings were com- passion in disguise, but it is hard
to understand why the same argument could not be made for the drunk who abuses his wife and children (Butterfield, 1994; italics added).
In terms of the
aforementioned (and above-denigrated, by Halifax) use of illicit and abused
prescription substances: Included among the usage attributed to various
“genuine sages” have been LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, nitrous oxide, and the
opium deriva- tives Percodan and Demerol. Also amyl nitrite, a blood vessel-
dilator used to cause a “high” or to improve sex; and, it goes with- out
saying, marijuana. Not to mention Quaaludes reportedly given as a medical
treatment in Rajneeshpuram. (That only Percodan, Demerol, Quaaludes and nitrous
oxide among all those are recog- nized as being—like the opiate heroin—physically addictive, seems somewhat beside the
point.) And God only knows what the police were expecting to find when they
raided Trungpa’s Scottish center. (People with nothing to conceal generally do
not feel the need to desperately hide themselves, as Trungpa did, in such
circum- stances.)
Even metaphorically, the analysis fares no better:
Fred [Stanton]’s final comment on
Andrew [Cohen] was, “Andrew creates addicts. It’s like giving people heroin”
(Tarlo, 1997).
On top of that,
we again have “genuine masters” allegedly building secret passageways leading
to the dormitories of young girls in their care. (Caplan quotes frequently and
respectfully from Muktananda in her books, thus inadvertently providing a bad, bad example from him of how not to do the guru-disciple relationship
properly. Both of her relevant books were written well after the 1994 New
Yorker exposé of him by Lis Harris.) Plus, we have the reported pedophilia/ephebophilia
of universally revered figures such as Ramakrishna, as an early precursor to
the allegations against Sai Baba. Also, holy Zen masters “beating the crap out
of” their disciples, even to the point of death, and being celebrated for their macho, “ego-killing” abuse by foolish persons
who themselves have obviously never been thus “beneficially” beaten.
And all of
that is ever done, of course, “in
the name of God, for the compas- sionate benefit of all sentient beings,” by
great bodhisattvas and otherwise. And woe unto any “disloyal” disciple who
should even think otherwise, and thereby risk his “one chance at enlighten-
ment” in this life.
I myself am
again in no way anti-drug, anti-dildo, anti-secret- passageway-to-the-dormitory,
anti-whorehouse, anti-orgy or anti- leprechaun. It is simply obvious, by now,
that any of those, when put into the hands of “god-men” who have carved islands
of abso- lute power for themselves in the world, only make an already dan-
gerous situation much worse.
We can surely
agree with Ms. Halifax in her three decades of experience, though, that the
delusion of enlightenment generally “represents an aspiration that is better
than an aspiration to be a murderer.” Unless, of course, you’re Charles Manson.
For, he bor- rowed heavily from Eastern philosophy in creating his own pre-
rational view of the world, hinted at “deity status” for himself, and believed
that “since all is one, nothing is wrong.”
Manson ... called himself “a.k.a.
Lord Krishna, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, the Buddha” during a 1986 parole hearing
(Agence, 1999).
After all that,
it should be painfully clear that the delusion of enlightenment is the most dangerous, not the most wonderful, de-
lusion. (Again, Jim Jones and David Koresh had similar messianic regards for
their own enlightenment as does the still-incarcerated Manson. In all three of
those “worst” cases, the delusion of enlight- enment/divinity undeniably helped
create the violent tragedies for which they are each known.) That
most-dangerous regard is so if for no other reason than the effect that it has
on the ensuing naïve followers. For, those end up throwing their lives and
sanity away on persons who, even while laying claim to the highest levels of
enlightenment (whether validly or psychotically), grandiosely de- ceive
themselves, and then mislead others, all with the apparent goal of being given
the proper obeisance due to themselves as “en- lightened masters.”
And as far as
the treatment of animals goes, the spellbinding writer Deborah Boliver Boehm (1996) relates her experiences in a Japanese Zen
monastery in Kyoto, upon being presented with two stray kittens:
“Will you keep them?” Saku-san asked. “What if I didn’t?” I asked.
“Then they
would be left to die, or to be found by some- one else if they were lucky.”
“But why doesn’t
the sodo adopt them?”
“Because then
we would become a dumping ground for every unwanted cat in town, and they would
tear up the ta- tami [straw meditation mats]. Besides, some monks have al- lergies.”
“But what about
the vow you take every day, to save all sentient beings?”
“It’s a nice
idea, but not very practical,” said Saku-san with a wide-shouldered shrug.
[B]eneath the smiles Tibetans
obviously are not perfect. It’s not all loving-kindness here; I see a monk beat a dog, another
one smokes and while Buddhist texts forbid meat, the fleshy bodies of sheep
hang in roadside butcher boxes attracting swarms of flies and shoppers
galore....
I know the
Dalai Lama has tried to turn
vegetarian but so long as he and other Tibetan Buddhists continue to eat meat,
the tinge of hypocrisy will remain (Macdonald, 2003;
italics added).
* * *
Having said all of that, one can
still sadly strike a much more negative note, when it comes to the effects of
messianic delusions of
enlightenment/divinity on both leaders and their followers:
Adolf Hitler had a mystical
awakening at Pasewalk Hospital in 1918, following the defeat of Germany; it led
to his deci- sion to enter politics (Oakes, 1997).
Hitler by now was possessed by
delusions of grandeur.... Convinced that he was Germany’s political messiah,
his sup- porters unashamedly referred
to Hitler as a prophet. After
reading Mein Kampf, Joseph Goebbels, later the Party’s propaganda chief,
wrote “Who is this man? half plebian, half God! Truly Christ, or only St.
John?” For the growing num- ber of “disciples” gathering around Hitler at this
time— referred to as the “charismatic community”—Hitler was more than just a politician offering political and economic so-
lutions, he was a messianic leader
embodying the salvation of Germany (D. Welch, 2001).
As if to
further close the circle, then, we find this, in Goodrick- Clarke’s (1994) Occult Roots of Nazism:
The Ariosophists, initially active
in Vienna before the First World War, borrowed
from the theosophy
of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, in order to prophesy
and vindicate a coming era of German
world rule....
At least two
Ariosophists were closely involved with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in the
1930s, contribut- ing to his ... visionary plans for the Greater Germanic Reich
in the third millennium....
Ravenscroft
adapted the materials of Rudolf Steiner ... to
the mythology of occult Nazism.
Nor was that
the only relevance of Eastern metaphysics to the Nazi cause:
Savitri Devi, the French-born
Nazi-Hindu prophetess, de- scribed Hitler as an avatar of Vishnu and likened
Nazism to the cult of Shiva with its emphasis on destruction and new creation....
[She] was sure
that Hitler had realized he was an ava- tar while still a youth
(Goodrick-Clarke, 2003).
Overall, truly
believing that you are “enlightened and can do no wrong”—as every “messiah” and
nearly every “meditation mas- ter” has role-played himself into believing—gives
you unlimited license to mistreat others “for their own good.” Indeed, it
actually places your conscience farther out of reach than if you were know- ingly manipulating them purely for
your own selfish benefit, as a simple con man (or woman).
As Professor J.
H. von Dullinger insightfully observed over a century and a quarter ago:
All absolute power demoralizes its
possessor. To that all his- tory bears witness. And if it be a spiritual power
which rules men’s consciences, the danger is only so much greater, for the possession of such a power exercises a
specially treacher- ous fascination, while it is peculiarly conducive to
self-deceit, because the lust of dominion,
when it has become a passion,
is only too easily in this case excused under the plea of zeal for
the salvation of others.
For that
primary reason, among many secondary others, the “guru game,” even when enacted by “genuine masters” (such as the swooning Ramakrishna, the Force-ful
Aurobindo, the caste- conscious Ramana Maharshi, the non-healer Meher Baba, and
the firewalking Yogananda) is more dangerous than is any secular power-play or
con game.
Even when
performed with integrity and sincerity? Yes. In fact, doubly so:
Nothing in the world
is more dangerous than sincere
igno- rance and conscientious stupidity.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
And Lord, have we seen enough of that.
* * *
Most of the “great sages” whose
behavior we have touched upon within these pages have been men. Notable
exceptions, however, have included Ramakrishna’s wife, Aurobindo’s “Mother,”
Mukta- nanda’s Gurumayi, and Yogananda’s Daya Mata and Tara Mata. Also, Ma Jaya
Sati Bhagavati, Ammachi, Jetsunma, and Andrew Harvey’s Mother Meera. The
latter’s original hope, at age fourteen in the 1970s, had actually been to
replace Aurobindo’s Mother in the Auroville ashram in Pondicherry, following that Mother’s pass- ing (Minor, 1999):
She had ... received visions of both
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in which they told her that she was entrusted with
the work of completing the transformation of the world they had begun. The
language of Aurobindo and the Mother are regularly a part of her descriptions
of these visions, but of- ten, she said, Aurobindo and the Mother actually
appeared to her and in their
conversations commissioned her to con- tinue the work.
The entirely
non-mystical, twentieth-century, late Russian- American philosopher Ayn Rand
(d. 1982), too, apparently man- aged to create a personality cult around
herself. Loyalty there was evidenced to the point where one of her sincere
followers report-
edly floated (in the late ’60s) the idea of murder
as a means of deal- ing with an unfaithful (and
otherwise married) former lover of the homely, yet eminently rational, Ms. Rand
(Shermer, 1997).
The endangered
ex-lover in question was the dashing Nathan- iel Branden—Rand’s “intellectual
heir,” to whom Atlas Shrugged was
dedicated. (The book itself was the “greatest human achieve- ment in the
history of the world,” according to Rand and Branden.) Together, they
encouraged followers of Rand to consider them as being “the two greatest
intellects on the planet.”
Branden himself
was later to host a delightful dinner, in the mid-’80s, for his good friend,
Ken Wilber (1991). Branden is, fur- ther,
another one of the founding members of Wilber’s Integral In- stitute.
From the former’s
own website (www.nathanielbranden.net):
The name Nathaniel Branden has
become synonymous with “the psychology of self-esteem,” a field he began
pioneering over thirty years ago. He has done more, perhaps, than any other
theorist to awaken America’s consciousness to the im- portance of self-esteem
to human well-being.
One would
expect no less, though, from one of the two “great- est intellects on the
planet.”
So, it is a
small, small spiritual world, after all. And even smaller when one considers
what happens when other scholars “go bad”:
[Frithjof] Schuon, blessed by God
and the Virgin Mary, [be- lieves that he] radiates grace from his body—at all
times but most potently when he is naked; and that this is itself a sal- vific
act....
[His given
initiations] consist of Schuon in a state of semi-nakedness at the center
of a circle of semi-naked female disciples (Rawlinson, 1997).
Even when fully
clothed, Schuon was evidently no ordinary man:
He himself says that “I was from the
beginning a person dif- ferent from the others, I was made from different
material.” An unpublished paper, The
Veneration of the Shaykh [writ- ten by his Da-like fourth “wife”], says
that Schuon is “an eminent manifestation of the eternal
sadguru ... an ‘avataric’
phenomenon ... a ‘prophetic’ figure
... and a great bodhi- sattva”; that he demonstrates the qualities of Shiva and
Krishna; and has affinities with Abraham, David, Christ, and Muhammad....
One disciple
who questioned Schuon’s authority was branded as mad; another was called “a
natural swine”; and many others (including these two) were excommunicated
(Rawlinson, 1997).
Dr. Schuon,
as a recognized expert in the perennial
philosophy or transcendent unity of religions, was of course referred to
re- spectfully, in far less interesting ways, in Wilber’s
early (e.g., 1982, 1983)
writings.
Should the
aforementioned male/female numerical discrep- ancy in guru-dom still irk,
however, consider the revered Bengali mystic Ananda Moyi Ma, who herself
claimed to be an avatar, or direct incarnation of the Divine Mother. Indeed,
after meeting her in 1936, Yogananda (1946)
expressed his evaluation of her degree of spiritual advancement thusly:
I had found many men of
God-realization in India, but never before had I met such an exalted woman
saint.
Arthur Koestler
(1960), however, added the following informa- tion regarding Ananda’s
character:
[F]rom the age of twenty-eight onward,
for an undefined number of years, she was unable to feed herself. “Whenever she
tried to carry food to Her mouth, Her grasp slackened and a large part of the
food slipped through Her fingers”....
There were ...
occasions when, at the sight of an Un- touchable eating rice, or a dog
devouring garbage, she would begin to cry plaintively, “I want to eat, I want
to eat.” On yet other occasions, she had fits of ravenous overeating....
She was prone
to weeping, and to laughing fits which of- ten lasted over an hour. She liked to
tease her devotees and to display a kittenish behavior, though sometimes her
play- fulness could more appropriately be called cruelty. When [one of her closest followers] was ill,
she did not visit him for several months, and on certain occasions during his
conva- lescence she expressly forbade that food be sent to him.
Ma herself was
nevertheless credited with having profound healing abilities, as Yogananda’s (1946) niece relates:
At the entreaty of a disciple, Ananda
Moyi Ma went to the home of a dying man. She stood by his bedside; as her hand
touched his forehead, his death-rattle ceased. The disease vanished at once; to
the man’s glad astonishment, he was well.
All such
claimed abilities and exalted realization aside, how- ever, the following
incident stands out and rankles:
An old woman came forward,
prostrated herself, and begged Ananda to intercede for her son, a soldier
reported missing after a clash in the border area. Ananda kept chewing pan, ignoring her. The woman began to
shout and sob in near- hysterics. Ananda said harshly, “Go away,” brushing her
aside with a single gesture, and the old woman, still crying, was led from the
room (Koestler, 1960).
If there is
compassion in such behavior, only
one not yet suita- bly shaken from
the pleasant fantasy that such actions might be a manifestation of God “working
in mysterious ways” could find it.
Consider further
that it has been reported
that the vast major-
ity of the individuals currently sitting on the SRF Board of Direc- tors are
nuns. And those have given no indication whatsoever of any wish on their part
to give up the rigidly hierarchical structure of that organization, or their
choice positions in it.
To Daya Mata, we and everyone who disagrees with her are
—to quote a favorite expression of hers—“pipsqueaks”....
Daya Mata
actually said once to Brother Anandamoy and me, “Let’s face it, women are more
spiritual than men” (Walters, 2002).
The revered
Mata herself has been prominently featured in various magazines, in celebration
of her role as one of the world’s first female spiritual leaders, and thus as
“part of the solution” to the world’s problems.
Of course, the
women in Rajneesh’s ashrams were part of the same “solution”:
True to Rajneesh’s vision of women
as “the pillars of my temple,” women dominated the leadership of the movement
(except for Bhagwan “Himself”). Braun notes that women controlled over 80% of
executive positions in Rajneeshpuram (Palmer and Sharma, 1993).
And
Rajneeshpuram, as we know, was the Oregon ashram in- famous for its salmonella,
electronic bugging and alleged murder plots.
Undeterred, Ma Bhagavati has informed us:
If people don’t accept women teachers,
that’s the end of eve- rything, because the men have made a real mess of things
(in Caplan, 2002).
Bhagavati,
recall, was the reportedly self-professed “incarna- tion of the Divine Mother”
whom Ram Dass, on the basis of his own
experiences, totally repudiated in the mid-’70s, in his “Das and Dasser” period, and her days as the
gold-bangled “Joya.”
“The end of everything,” indeed.
Mother Teresa,
sadly, fares no better in the harsh light of day, as Aroup Chatterjee’s (2003) Mother
Teresa: The Final Verdict has demonstrated:
[Mother Teresa] has been quoted as saying that suffering is a
means of attaining Christ; to suffer along with the suffering helps one come closer to God. In other words the poor and dy-
ing are to her only a means of attaining salvation for herself. Their
suffering, which is a replay of the suffering of Christ, gives her spiritual
succor. Hence the tremendous funds at her
disposal have never been used to set up a state of the art hospital where much
of the suffering could be alleviated or pre-empted; to establish schools which
would rescue genera- tions from poverty; to renew the slums of Calcutta and
eliminate disease and crime. For, she has a vested interest in the perpetuation of poverty and
sickness and death.
Nor were those
religious issues by any means the only prob- lems with Teresa’s work and
character:
She inflated her operations and
activities manifold in her speeches to journalists and supporters. Often her
statements would have no connection with reality whatsoever. Many
times she had been captured on
television while telling very tall tales about
her work. She prevaricated even in her Nobel
Prize acceptance speech....
[W]hen it comes
to social issues, even the present pope is
much more liberal than Mother Teresa....
Mother was
confronted on the issue of pedophile priests by the Irish journalist Kathy
Ward. She replied, “Pray, pray and make sacrifices for those who are going
through such terrible temptations.” It is not that
she was against custodial sentencing per se: a few times she said that she wanted to open a special jail
for doctors who performed abortions.
Christopher
Hitchens (1995) had earlier written his own
less- detailed exposé of Teresa:
[S]he once told an interviewer that,
if faced with a choice be- tween Galileo and the authority of the Inquisition, she would have sided
with the Church authorities....
“She also
touched on AIDS, saying she did not want to label it a scourge of God but that
it did seem like a just retri- bution for improper
[e.g., homosexual or promiscuous] sexual conduct.”
And how did Ken
Wilber (2000a) jump the gun, in voicing his
positive attitude toward Mother Teresa upon receiving (media) news of her
death, nearly half a decade after Hitchens’ exposé?
Mother Teresa was much closer to
that divine ray [than was Princess Diana, who died in the same week], and
practiced it more diligently, and without the glamour. She was less a person
than an opening of Kosmic compassion—unrelenting, fiercely devoted,
frighteningly dedicated.
I, anyway,
appreciated them both very much, for quite different reasons.
Such opinions,
sadly, are again exactly par for the course with Wilber, in his consistent vouching for other people’s high degrees of enlightenment. For here too he
obviously, if utterly wrongly, con- siders himself to be in a position to
intuitively and intelligently separate the reality from the PR, even without
having minimally familiarized himself with the long-extant, relevant research
mate- rials.
Likewise for his friend, Dr. Roger Walsh (1999):
The few hours I spent with Mother
Teresa and the Dalai Lama continue to inspire me years later, while films of
them have inspired people around the world. Such is the power of those who devote
their lives to awakening and service.
Or, rather,
“such is the power” of those with good public rela- tions machines and the
ability to bury their indiscretions and prejudices. For, they shall be taken as
saints and gods, even in the midst of cruel homophobia, bizarre sexual
hang-ups, association with known criminals and the receiving of stolen goods.
(Mother Teresa accepted over a million dollars in donations from Savings-
and-Loan fraudster Charles Keating, and wrote a naïve letter in his defense during his trial. Following
his conviction and impris- onment, the deputy district attorney of Los Angeles
County con- tacted Teresa, encouraging her to return those “stolen” funds. He
received no reply from the “great saint” [Chatterjee, 2003].)
Anyway, one might
even begin to sympathize with such per- spectives as Bhagavati’s, above, in the
face of nonsense such as Brooke’s (1999) position. For there, he repeatedly
expressed the desire to “out” (his word) the “wrangling bitch” and “vain effete
peacock” (his phrases) Sai Baba. He also evinced a predictably “Christian”
attitude toward female gurus in general:
I had never met [Hilda Charlton] ...
and had my own per- sonal barriers and suspicions about women gurus. It just
wasn’t my style.
Gender-based
“suspicions,” however, cannot be reduced to mere matters of “style,” even in
the case of complete flakes such as Charlton. Nor can such dismal
attitudes—whether coming from male born-again Christians or in reverse from
celebrated contem- porary female yogis—be viewed as a valid antidote to the
problems which pervade the spiritual marketplace, or even the saner world in
general.
We should not,
therefore, attempt to split the power/sexual/ psychological issues underlying
these poor reported behaviors along
male/female or patriarchal/matriarchal lines, as is often done. Indeed, should
one even be tempted to do so, one should in- stead consider Janja Lalich’s
experiences in a “soul-crushing” po- litical “cult” founded by thirteen
feminist Marxist-Leninists. Elev- en of those founders “self-identified as
radical lesbians.” And yet, even under their “nurturing, tolerant, egalitarian”
rule:
A well-respected doctor and party
theoretician in his fifties said he was so tired
he prayed daily
for a heart attack to give
him some release. A number of others said they secretly wished they would get
killed in a car accident because they couldn’t think of any other way of
getting out (in Langone, 1995).
You’re thinking
of dabbling in something like paganism to slake your spiritual thirst, on the
wishful supposition that it might be any less founded on lies, sexism, and
unapologetic misrepresen- tations than is any other religion or form of
spirituality? Please first read Charlotte Allen’s delightful (2001) article, “The Scholars and the Goddess”:
In
all probability, not a single
element of the Wiccan story [of
its own origins] is true. The evidence is overwhelming that Wicca is a
distinctly new religion, a 1950s concoction influ- enced by such things as
Masonic ritual and a late-nine- teenth-century fascination with the esoteric
and the occult, and that various assumptions informing the Wiccan view of
history are deeply flawed.
Indeed, as
Allen further notes, the idea—central to Wiccan be- lief—that any ancient
civilization, anywhere, ever worshiped a single, archetypal goddess, is wholly
rejected by contemporary scholars, on the basis of both written records and
archeology. (Cf. Cynthia Eller’s [2003] refreshingly insightful and devastating
The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory.)
Likewise for
the purported superiorities of past Native Ameri- can societies, or the like,
to “fragmented, patriarchal, European” ones:
The Mayas, whose cities were
completely unfortified, were long thought to be “an unusually gentle, peaceful
people liv- ing in a relatively benign theocracy.” But as the Mayan writ- ing
system began to be deciphered and as new excavations were undertaken, a different picture
emerged. Archaeologists found
depictions of severed heads and bound captives under public buildings. As
archaeologist Arthur Demarest con- cludes on the basis of this new evidence,
“the Maya were one of the most violent state-level societies in the New World”
(Eller, 2003).
All of which
only goes to reinforce the wise observation that “a saint [or a fanciful
mythology, or a ‘Golden Age’ culture] is what remains after a person’s sins
have been forgotten.” Or, if not duly forgotten, at least prematurely buried by
close disciples, as by the sage himself/herself—all of them having no small
interest in pre- senting the best possible public face, for their own welfare in power
and glory.
* * *
We have earlier touched on the idea
of spiritual incest, in terms of sexual relations usually (but not always) initiated by the guru- figure with his (or
her) trusting disciples. The respected theoreti- cians in the higher branches
of psychology and consciousness stud- ies may still be grappling with how to
explain away such life- destroying “mistakes” on the part of their “enlightened”
heroes. By contrast, others with far
less commitment to the field, but far
more insight, had already discerned the relevant dynamics and appro- priate
restrictions over a decade and a half ago:
The power of the pastor over the
congregant is tremendously enhanced by his authority, if he wishes to exercise
it, to de- scribe to a woman her status with God. A sexually abusive clergyman
can easily exploit this authority by telling a woman that her sexual
involvement is part of a divinely or- dained plan. Even sophisticated women can
have difficulty resisting this argument if they are devoted to the religious
vision that the clergyman represents.
[So-called
religious] cults in which the guru or spiritual leader has sexual relationships
with many of his female con- gregants are more blatant examples of this
phenomenon (Rutter, 1989).
Rutter continues:
The [related] issue of sexual
relationships between profes- sors and students draws attention because of
their frequen- cy, which [high frequency] can be partially [italics added] at- tributed to a traditional absence of
a clearly demarcated for- bidden zone [where sexual activities are not allowed]
on the college campus. People who argue against such prohibitions usually claim
that the women involved are consenting adults and that there is no duty to
protect them....
All of these
arguments ignore important social and psy- chological realities. The social
dynamic still places the power in the hands of the teacher or professor. The
psychological dynamic is based on the underlying reality of continuing de-
pendency issues, which must be taken into account in assess-
ing the ethics of sexual relationships between female college and graduate
students and their professors. Recently, some universities have begun
articulating clear policies against faculty-student intimacies that do take the
unequal power dynamics into consideration.
Chapter 7 of Singer and Lalich’s
(1996) Crazy Therapies covers similar topics to the above:
Sex with a therapist or counselor
[or guru] is not okay and is not going to benefit the client [or disciple]. If
anything ... it will cause new problems and exacerbate previous ones.
Gurus, like fathers, are in a
context that gives them enor- mous power because of their disciples’ needs,
trust, and de- pendency. One reason incest is a betrayal of trust is what a
daughter needs from her father is a sense of self-worth not specifically linked
to her sexuality. Sex with the guru is simi- larly incestuous because a guru
ostensibly functions as a spiritual father to whom one’s growth is entrusted.
Having sex with a parental figure reinforces using sex for power. This is not
what young women (or men) need for their devel- opment. When the guru drops
them, which eventually he does, feelings of shame and betrayal usually
result that leave deep scars (Kramer
and Alstad, 1993).
Note that none
of the above ideas are puritanical, shadow-pro- jecting or prudish. (In the
words of the One Taste-realized Drukpa Kunley, hero to the Dalai Lama: “You
like religion and I like cunt. May both of us be happy!”) They are, rather,
simply a minimal ap- plication of real compassion for the well-being of others,
being di- rected in the spiritual world against individuals who make them-
selves out to be gods.
When people do not have a clear idea
of harm—and it is very hard to talk about sex and get it right—they accuse
others of being Puritans. This is going on all over Buddhism today (Lew
Richmond, in [Downing, 2001]).
As if to prove
Richmond’s point, the tantric initiate John Blo- feld (1970) gave a fallacious defense
which could have been applied
to the vast majority of our world’s guru-figures:
[A]dvanced adepts are permitted to
do what seems good to them, regardless of the normal [e.g., social] rules of
conduct. To consider abiding by the
rules as necessarily good or trans- gressing them as necessarily
evil would be to tie themselves down with the dualism they have set out to transcend....
Sordid people
judge others by their own standards, read- ing crude motives into every sort of action.
Hypocrites will be likely to see their own vice in every
unconventional act of a man sincerely seeking spiritual advancement. It is hard
to convince them that others may act from lofty motives. A true adept, however,
will not be put out by misguided criticism.
But, to what
extent, if any, have our world’s guru-figures ever really acted from “lofty
motives”? And might not any associated hypocrisy perhaps apply more to the
teachers themselves than to their “puritanical” critics?
Further
consider the twenty-five virgin girls who surely had their lives messed up by
one deluded old man, Upasani Baba, re- gardless of what component of their marriage
may have been only symbolic or spiritual. (For the young girls sleeping with
Mahatma Gandhi, too, it was merely a “spiritual” arrangement. Yet, had his lust
ever risen to the fore, the likely outcome would have been rape. How well would you sleep, with that lurking over your shoul- der?)
That same Baba
was again convinced that he could distin- guish the “Avatar for this age” from
the mass of spiritual seekers, which avatar just happened, against all odds, to
be one of his own disciples. That is indeed “sordid,” but not in any way which
the apologetic Blofeld would ever have imagined. If one wishes to see the
effects of “traditional agrarian” society on allegedly constrain- ing what
guru-figures are allowed to get away with, one need look no further than
celebrated “spiritual discipline” like that.
To state the
obvious, again: Any set of “rigid constraints” which grants a greater degree of
latitude in allowable behavior to its god-figures than does Western society’s
own healthy permis- siveness (among consenting adults, here) would, in
practice, create an even more unconstrained society for those so fortunate as
to be the “kings” of it. Indeed, in the same West where a “lack of social
constraint” is regularly blamed for the excesses of its “crazy wis- dom” practitioners:
[Few] crazy-wisdom masters today are
afforded the privilege of making use of their full bag of tricks. They are well
aware that a single lawsuit brought against them ... could result in their
losing the opportunity to continue their teaching func- tion (Caplan, 2002).
Since those
lawsuits arise predominantly from alleged sexual abuses (cf. Swami Rama), one
cannot have it both ways. That is, one is welcome to state, with Ram Dass (in
Caplan, 2002), that previously “impeccable” gurus fall from their lofty ideals
because of the greater freedoms and promiscuity (in alcohol, drugs
and sex) in the West. One
would be hopelessly wrong—cf. Dass’ own “seven- teen-year-old jock,” Neem
Karoli Baba—but one is free to close one’s eyes and propose that. Having stated
it, however, one cannot then turn around and assert that “crazy wisdom” is
practiced with more freedom in the
East, where “the guru-principle is under- stood,” and lawsuits need not be so
feared should “Da Shit hit Da Fan”!
Note further
that while even educational institutions have ac- knowledged the existence of
relevant psychological dynamics be- tween teachers and students, from which the
students need to be protected, things are much worse for guru-figures and
disciples. For, a student receiving unwanted attention from a professor or
graduate supervisor might,
at least in theory (i.e.,
notwithstanding “old boys’ networks” and the like), transfer to another
class/super- visor, or go over the prof’s head to the dean, etc. There are no
such courts of appeal, however, for wronged disciples. Rather, there is merely
the fear that in saying “No” to anything that the guru- figure asks of you, you
are being disobedient and egoic, and thus retarding your own spiritual growth.
Further, to break with the guru at any stage of that may, one believes, cast
one into “Vajra hell,” or result in one “wandering the Earth for incarnations”
be- fore being given another chance at enlightenment, should you “waste” this
one.
More obviously,
no mere professor, graduate supervisor or employer could believably suggest
that sleeping with him (or her) is
part of a “divinely ordained plan.” Guru-figures, on the other hand, can and do
routinely advance exactly that idea. Thus, what- ever constraints may be placed on secular classes
should apply
even
more to guru-figures. For, in between the
“voice of God” speaking through them, the constraints to obey, and the lack of any court of appeal, the power imbalance is far greater in the spiri- tual world than in the academic.
Sex between the father-figure guru and his (or
her) disciples is again
widely recognized as being of a comparable psychological status to incest or
child abuse. One need not be stuck in any “puri- tanical” worldview, then, in
order to feel the need to object to such activities, whether they are occurring in spiritual or in
secular con- texts. Nor can proponents of “idiot tolerance” for the same
(alleged, spiritual) abuse safely hide behind the idea that such objections
arise merely from followers wanting their sages to be “dead from the neck
down.”
Encouragingly,
the California Yoga Teachers
Association Code of Conduct (Lasater, 1995)
admirably spelled out the minimal rele- vant constraints on the behavior of its
members a decade ago, even though
concerning itself only with imperfect teachers and their students, not “divine,
infallible” gurus and their disciples. There, they recognized that “all forms
of sexual behavior or harassment with students are unethical, even when a student
invites or con- sents to such behavior or involvement.” They further
instructed:
We do not make public ...
statement[s] implying unusual, unique or one-of-a-kind abilities, including
misrepresenta- tion through sensationalism, exaggeration or superficiality.
One wishes that
the frequently “one-of-a-kind” and “best,” “enlightened avatars” in the world
could see things as clearly—i.e., with such elementary, common-sense psychology
and integrity—as its “unenlightened, mere mortal” teachers
have. There would be far less garbage (“and the goddess”)
littering the long and winding spiritual road.
* * *
Leaving a [so-called] cult is like
experiencing a death of a loved one. There is a grieving process which will
take time. Time to process the feelings of confusion, loss, guilt, disillu-
sionment, anger, and lack of trust engendered (Bailey
and Bailey, 2003).
For first-hand accounts as to the difficulties involved in
disentan- gling oneself from spiritual and emotional commitments to
enlightenment at the feet of any
“great sage,” plus personal de- scriptions of the power games and manipulation
which are alleged to occur within the ashram environment, I have found the
follow- ing books to be excellent:
·
Michael Downing (2001), Shoes
Outside the Door—San Francisco Zen Center, Richard Baker (this book is
worth reading for the keen wit alone)
·
Stephen Butterfield (1994), The
Double Mirror—Chögyam Trungpa
·
Peter Marin (1995), “Spiritual Obedience,” in Freedom & Its Discontents—Chögyam
Trungpa
·
Satya Bharti Franklin (1992), The
Promise of Paradise— Rajneesh
·
Hugh Milne (1986), Bhagwan:
The God That Failed—Raj- neesh
·
Kate Strelley (1987),
The Ultimate Game—Rajneesh
·
Andre van der Braak (2003), Enlightenment
Blues— Andrew Cohen
·
Luna Tarlo (1997),
The Mother of God—Andrew Cohen
·
Martha Sherrill (2000),
The Buddha from Brooklyn— Jetsunma
·
Barbara and Betty Underwood (1979), Hostage to Heaven— the Moonies
·
Deborah Layton (1998),
Seductive Poison—Jim Jones
·
John Hubner and Lindsey Gruson (1990), Monkey on a Stick—the Hare Krishnas, exposed as the reportedly mur-
derous, drug-running, wife-beating, child-molesting apoca- lyptic “cult” we
were always reflexively warned to avoid. Yet, we chose instead to liberally
tolerate and defend them as an “alternative religion,” which should not be
discrimi- nated against simply for being “different.”
“Live and let live,”
right? Compare:
When I first started
to speak out about [alleged] cults approximately ten years ago [i.e., around 1982], I was one of an extremely
small group of lawyers who
were willing to address [so-called]
cultic groups’ broad range of
challenges to individual freedom and personal liberty. The podium had in fact
been largely forfeited to a strident, well-organized clique of “civil
libertarian” experts who discoursed at length upon the inviolability of the
First Amendment and the rights, vulnerabilities, and vitality of so-called new
religious movements (Herbert Rosedale,
in [Langone,
1995])
·
Amy Wallace (2003), Sorcerer’s
Apprentice—Carlos Casta- neda, another “world’s savior,” who was every bit
the tragi- cally equal fool in cruelly
disciplining his followers
as any of the other “Rude Boys” we have seen herein have been. The
details Wallace gives of an insane community founded on a “skillful means” of
reported lies and unspoken, rigid rules are nearly enough to cause one to lose
one’s faith in our sad species. Nor did Castaneda’s own famous writings
featuring the purported Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan fare any better in the
light of truth:
As sociologist Marcello Truzzi was
the first to say, Castaneda’s books were the greatest hoax since the Piltdown
Man (Gardner, 1999)
Anyone who has
ever lived in an ashram/monastery environ- ment, and recovered enough from that
to see how much less “evil” the real world is, will find numerous significant points of contact
in all of the above first-hand accounts—including Underwood’s days with
the Moonies, and Layton’s gripping story of her narrow es- cape from Jonestown.
For, as we have seen, the techniques used to keep residents in line and loyally
“living in fear” of what will hap- pen to their bodies or souls should they
leave are constant across all paths. That is so, regardless of the specific
beliefs involved in each case.
The total
insanity underlying the use of “skillful means” of teaching, and the easy
descent of followers into a chilling mob mentality, further come across frighteningly
in Sherrill’s book. Se- lected chapters from that text are available online, at
Sherrill (2000a). The “Great Blessing”
chapter there is an especially enlightening/sickening documentation of the
madness too often allegedly perpetrated in the name of “purifying compassion.” (For
the difference between reality and
hagiography, compare that ex- posé against the chapter on Jetsunma in
Mackenzie’s [1995] Re- born in the West. And then apply the same demythologizing pro-
portionately to each of the other tulkus covered
by Mackenzie.) That “purifying compassion” came, again, from a tulku whose spiri- tual greatness was formally recognized in the mid-’80s
by Wilber’s own Penor Rinpoche.
Also coming
across clearly there are the jaw-dropping ration- alizations created by
disciples, in absurdly viewing such alleged violent abuses as being for their
own benefit. That occurred within the context of ridiculously skewed ideas
about merit and karma — including tulkus reincarnating
as houses, wooden bridges, and equally wooden actors. Also, one cannot help but
note the laugha- bly superstitious interpretations of natural phenomena, and an
equally hideous, Catholic-like insistence on the confession of any broken vows to one’s superiors. For, the consequence of not confess- ing is that such breaks remain
allegedly forever unmendable. That is, they supposedly create obstacles and
produce more suffering “for countless
sentient beings” by one’s having failed to come forth quickly and voluntarily
to admit them.
In any case, a
primary idea to glean from all of the above- listed book-length testimonials is
that, if you’ve once decided to leave a spiritual community, follow through
on it, and don’t ever go back, even
if the community begs you to stay or to return. (Corol- lary: leaving in the
middle of the night, without saying “goodbye,” gives them less chance to talk
you out of that.) Things won’t get better by staying longer, and the nonsense
which caused you to decide to leave in the first place will only get worse.
None of those problems, further, are ever simply “tests sent by your guru” to
see how loyal you are, regardless of what the guru himself or his com- mitted
disciples may try to tell you.
Leaving such a community
after any meaningful length of stay of course means being ostracized by
the remaining members, and being regarded as having left for not being able to
take the disci- pline in that relationship. Or, being the subject of far worse
allega- tions and/or reported violence. That, however, is a small price to pay
for one’s freedom and (literally) one’s sanity.
Indeed, as to
the treatment which one may expect upon leav- ing the average “divine guru”:
Andrew Harvey (2000) and his part- ner broke with and publicly repudiated Mother Meera shortly
after having declared her to be “the avatar
who would save the world”
(Blacker, 1996). They then claim to have encountered the following set of horrors:
A vicious, callous, and
sophisticated system was set up by a group of ex-“close friends,” that included
anonymous letters, death threats for nearly a year, horrible telephone harass-
ment, visits to New York publishers to discredit Eryk’s and my work, attempts
to have me thrown out of my job in San Francisco, relentless public and private
calumny—the com- plete cocktail, in fact, of [so-called] cult violence,
demoniza- tion, and attempted destruction....
I know of many
cases of terrible abuse where ex-disci- ples of this or that “master” are too
terrified to speak out.
Former members
of Rajneesh’s (Milne
[1986]; Franklin [1992]) and
Muktananda’s (Harris, 1994) ashrams, to name
but two more, have claimed to fear for their safety in comparable situations.
Interestingly,
Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati (Joya) apparently re- gards Andrew Harvey’s claims of
harassment and homophobia against mother Meera as being “baloney.” She also,
however, has reportedly recently defended Trungpa and Rajneesh, and spoken
highly of Muktananda (Bostock, 1998).
Simultaneously, she has evidently “forgiven” Ram Dass—the “fighting puppy” at
her regal, parading “elephant feet”—for speaking out against her in the ’70s.
Again, the www.kashiashram.com website
offers a valuable correc- tive to her public face and to any claims that she is
doing “selfless, compassionate” work.
Comparably
disturbing details as to the alleged treatment of ex-members by Adi Da’s
community are available online at Jewel (1999). A good summary
of his reported behaviors in general can be
found online at ThisTruth (2001).
See also the
preface to Wakefield (1991) for her claimed
frightening experiences, including alleged death threats, after hav- ing
left Scientology. Plus, Chapter 9 of Wakefield (1996),
and the epilogue of Malko (1970), for
comparable allegations.
And yet, even
after all that, the Muktananda-quoting Caplan, as recently as 2001, could still
write:
There is the occasional Jim Jones,
Charles Manson, or Mar- shall Applewhite (Heaven’s Gate) who comes into the
spiri- tual scene and presents a physical danger to the very lives of the students
whom they claim to be saving. But these in-
stances are negligible in comparison
to the majority of spiri- tual schools and teachers, who present no danger of
physical harm to their students.
The hard data,
however, available for over twenty years by now, argues exactly the opposite.
For, as Conway and Siegelman reported in 1982, based on a survey of over four
hundred former “cult” members from forty-eight different groups:
Incidences of physical punishment,
reported by approxi- mately one in five respondents, included beatings, starva-
tion, physical bondage, cold showers and dousings and long hours of humiliating
and degrading labor.
Nor were those the only alleged
negative effects to be disclosed by Conway and Siegelman’s study.
Rather, nearly 20% of their re- spondents battled long-term health problems,
while two in every three faced lasting emotional difficulties. Further, 14%
claimed to have suffered from psychiatric delusions (e.g., hallucinations) for
up to eight years after breaking away from their respective organi- zations.
Also, more than one out of every five former members in the survey
had suicidal or other self-destructive feelings during the rehabilitation period after leaving—a
time which averaged more than sixteen months.
Interestingly,
beyond the first three to six months, the impact of “cult ritual” and
indoctrination did not correlate with the diffi- culties faced by the member
after leaving the group. That is, “most of the damage appears to be done in the
first few months” of (esp. residential) membership.
* * *
The “fury of a savior scorned” is
generally not limited to former members of his world-saving group,
but extends even to those third
parties who dare to speak in too much unpleasant detail about our world’s
spiritual organizations. The aforementioned late “cult psy- chology” expert
Margaret Singer (2003) apparently found that
out for herself the hard way:
Since the first edition of [Cults in Our Midst] came out, vari- ous
[so-called] cults have sent people to ring the doorbell of my home at all hours of the night, often leaving
menacing
es:
notes in my mailbox, then scampering
away in the dark like mischievous kids on a Halloween night....
In addition to
this childish level of harassment, a law- suit
was brought against
me and the book ...
which I am sure
was designed only to intimidate and to attempt to silence me and my work. The litigation
was also, I believe, an attempt to
dissuade my academic and clinical colleagues from pub- lishing similar research
and analysis of [alleged] cults in the United
States and from testifying against
[so-called] cults, as I do, in the many current criminal and
civil court cases un- der way between [alleged] cults and their former victims.
Steven Hassan (2000) reported his own comparable experienc-
When Combatting Cult Mind Control was first published in 1988, I became
one of the most visible targets of [so-called] cult disinformation campaigns.
There are [alleged] cult lead- ers who lecture their members on the evils of
speaking with me and even reading the book. Scientology has a “Dead Agent Pack” about me. This folder contains
material de- signed to assassinate my character—to “neutralize” me in members’
minds as a respected person. Countless times, I’ve been threatened with
lawsuits and have even received death threats from [alleged] cult members.
Several groups, such as the Moonies, tell their members that I am Satan’s
agent.
For the past twenty years, [David]
Lane’s books and articles exposing the [alleged] plagiarisms, lies,
inconsistencies and scandals of a number of new religious movements have raised a fury among true believers.
Members of various [al- leged] cults have [reportedly] made death threats,
written him letters with skeletons on them, broken into his apart- ment,
threatened lawsuits, and generally harassed him....
“They sent
letters about me claiming I was the negative force, that I was predicted from
the beginning of mankind” [says Lane] (Bellamy,
1995).
It was easy for Theosophists to
conclude that anyone who disagreed with them, however well intentioned, was
working in the service of the Dark Forces (Washington,
1995).
As has been noted previously, it would be inconsistent for SRF
to not view the present author
as being, like the above “Dark
Forces,” quite literally a deluded
tool of Maya—the satanic cosmic
delusive force, or devil.
Singer herself
unfortunately downplayed the real and legiti- mate search for Truth in her list
of reasons why people join and remain in spiritual communities. Instead, she
focused on those joiners simply being vulnerable to proselytizing in “looking
for meaning” after a personal loss,
depression, loneliness or insecurity,
etc. For my own part, however, I have lived
that “seeker myth,” with no proselytizing whatsoever on the part of any of Yogananda’s
followers. I therefore cannot take Singer’s broad debunking of that principle
seriously. Nor does one encounter anything in the first- person accounts of
Butterfield, van der Braak, Milne, Franklin or Strelley which would match
Singer’s assertion of “active, sophisti- cated and unrelenting proselytizing” on
the part of the relevant organizations (re: Trungpa, Cohen and Rajneesh). The
Gurdjieff Society and his eponymous Institute likewise “never advertise and
never recruit” (Washington, 1995).
The same is
true even of Adi Da’s group, at least with regard to non-celebrities: “[S]o far as I know, the community has never
gone in for active recruiting, preferring to let people be drawn by Da Free
John’s writings” (Lowe, 1996). Layton’s
experiences in be- ing pulled into
the People’s Temple, however, did include flattering attention/pressure
from Jones himself. Underwood’s (1979) and Hassan’s (1990) reported experiences
in becoming involved with the Moonies
likewise fit much more closely with Singer’s asser- tions.
In any case,
for those nontraditional organizations which do actively recruit, university
campuses remain the primary area of focus:
University students are often
vulnerable recruitment targets for potentially harmful groups (Smith, 2004).
College campuses are the chief
recruiting centers of most [al- leged]
destructive cults, and virtually every college campus in the country has been and continues to be visited by these organizations....
At the
University of California—Berkeley, for example, it is estimated that at least
two hundred different religious sects on and off-campus are recruiting from the
30,000- student campus (in Rudin, 1996).
In
a survey done in 1980 by Zimbardo
of more than one thou- sand high school students in the
San Francisco Bay area 54% reported
a [so-called] cult had attempted to recruit them and 40% said they had experienced
multiple attempts (Ross, 2002b).
Indeed, in one
survey (Singer, 2003) it was found that 43%
of former “cult” members were students (in high school or college) at the time
when they became involved with their respective organi- zations. Further, of those students, 38% dropped out of
school after joining their groups.
Some ... observers echo Richard
Delgado’s call for an inten- sive public education campaign about the
[so-called] cults.... Dr. Lester Rosenthal ... believes ninth, tenth, and
eleventh graders should be required to take courses in school on how the
[so-called] cults recruit and operate (Rudin and Rudin, 1980).
Beyond the
sorely needed education of young people in par- ticular, the following
reasonable suggestions have also been made:
Federal funds should be appropriated
for research and treat- ment of [so-called] mind control victims (Hassan,
1990).
[T]he government might launch a
campaign to raise aware- ness about the dangers of [so-called] cults,
just as it has done for smoking, seat belts, and drunk
driving (Hassan, 2000).
Professor Richard Delgado asserts
that the legal status of [alleged] religious cults should be analyzed within
the con- text of the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Con-
stitution—which forbids slavery—rather than within the First Amendment alone.
He believes the conditions of some [so-called] cult members do in fact
constitute a state of slav- ery (Rudin and Rudin, 1980).
U.S. courts have repeatedly ruled
that the First Amendment provides only unqualified freedom of religious belief, not unlimited freedom to
practice those beliefs in ways that may violate existing laws or pose a threat to the health
and safety of individuals or
society (Conway and Siegelman, 1982).
The means of
getting into the organization may differ between non-proselytizing “true sanghas” and recruiting-based nontradi-
tional organizations. Still, once one is inside, working long hours for minimal
wages, in a “state of slavery” to a master whose orders you cannot disobey,
leaving is just as difficult. That is true whether departing from the oppressive environment means “falling into Satan’s power,” being “pursued by disasters,” or simply risking showing oneself to be a “bad
disciple”—a weakling who “can’t take the heat.”
* * *
In my own case, after leaving Hidden
Valley, I happened to get in touch with the monk (from a different order) who
had taken over the position and workspace which I had vacated there. I then at-
tempted to inform him as to the problems with that organization, as reported in
Russell (1999), for example.
His response?
“If anything
were going really wrong, Yogananda would step
in and intervene. Until then, the Master was probably just looking down
and laughing at the foibles of his disciples. In the meantime, we should just
focus on changing ourselves, and not
worry about things like that.” Or words to that effect.
Oy vey. With
“wisdom” like that, one does not need ignorance. With “compassion” like that,
one does not need callousness. For, at what point in the slow descent into
insanity of any of our world’s
guru-figures and organizations did God or the relevant line of “as- cended,
omniscient” Masters ever “step in” to
stop alleged pedo- philia, spiritual incest,
intense psychological and physical abuse,
or worse? When, even, did Jesus ever step in to stop the sodomizing of altar boys in the Catholic Church? And
other guru-figures will then have
more interest in, or ability to stop, abuses done in their name? And if they do
not step in, “everything is going as it should, for your own benefit,” so “bend
over, here it comes”?
That I was apparently poisoned
and/or deliberately over- drugged [in Rajneesh’s ashram] was the furthest thing
from my mind....
I took
everything that happened at face value. The only ulterior motives
I looked for were spiritual. Everything was
happening the way it should.
It always did (Franklin, 1992).
[T]o be a disciple [of Rajneesh] you
had to believe that every- thing that happened was literally or mystically the
guru’s doing. If something appeared to be wrong or unjust or fool- ish, that
was your myopia; it was otherwise in the guru’s en- compassing vision
(Fitzgerald, 1986).
That attitude,
of course, was nothing peculiar or pathological to Rajneesh, but is rather the
essence of the guru-disciple relation- ship, in agrarian India and Tibet as in
the postmodern West.
You think that
your “divinely loving, omniscient” guru-figure
is watching over you, and everything is always working out as it should,
for your own greatest good? Tell that to Lisa McPherson.
Oh, you can’t: She’s dead.
* * *
We cannot take refuge in the idea
that any of the individuals ex- posed herein are simply “false teachers,” and
that genuinely en- lightened individuals would not behave so poorly. Nor is the
prob- lem simply with “naïve Westerners” following guru-figures who would not
be taken seriously in the “spiritual East,” as is some- times wrongly
suggested. For, if there is such a thing as a “genuine guru,” who would ever have
doubted that Vivekananda, Trungpa, Muktananda or Yogananda would qualify as
such? These are not the worst of
gurus, they are rather among the widely recognized best! Ramakrishna, likewise, was ostensibly one of
the few indubitable Indian saints
and sages amidst the veri- table plague of so-called swamis, gurus,
“enlightened mas- ters,” maharishis, “bhagvans” [sic] and the like of recent times (Oldmeadow,
2004).
After all that we have seen, then, it is easy to sympathize with the perspective of the insightful
and democratic 1984 author, George
Orwell (1980):
Saints should always be judged
guilty until they are proved innocent.
The bottom line
with each of these figures is thus not whether one or another of their visions
may have been real or imagined. Nor
is it whether their actual degree of enlightenment is even one- tenth of what they and their loyal disciples claim it to be. (It is
not.) Nor can our concerns be
allayed by the suggestion that any reticence in approaching one or another of
these figures is based merely in “fear of ego-annihilation” or in a
“misunderstanding of the nature of obedience” to the guru. Nor is the problem
with “pro- jection/transference onto the perfect father/mother figure,” or “in-
tolerance for human imperfections” in evaluating the teacher’s character and behavior.
(Again, none of those issues were present in Zimbardo’s prison study. Yet, he
still could not avoid creating a toxic environment which exactly parallels
ashramic society.)
Nor need we
even worry about which of these organizations should be designated as a
(prepersonal or transpersonal) “cult,” or whether the alarming/alarmist term
“brainwashing” should be used to
describe any of their means of control. (Anyone who wishes to intelligently
compare the tactics reportedly utilized by our world’s ostensibly “safe”
guru-figures and spiritual communities, against those in recognized
“problematic” environments, however, will find many significant points of correspondence. For that, De- nise
Winn’s [2000] The Manipulated Mind and
Len Oakes’ [1997] Prophetic Charisma are
excellent.)
Rather, the
root question to ask with regard to even these “best” figures is simply:
Would you trust
your mental and physical health to any of them?
* * *
“Your spiritual teacher’s an
Enlightened Master? Join the club, buddy.”
Maharshi. Trungpa. Muktananda. Swami Rama. Gurumayi.
Chinmoy. Jetsunma.
Andrew Cohen. Werner
Erhard. “Your spiritual teacher’s an avatar? Impressive.”
Vivekananda. Sivananda. Aurobindo. The Dalai Lama. Babaji. Lahiri Mahasaya. Sri Yukteswar. Yogananda. Ramakrishna’s wife. Aurobindo’s Mother. Ananda Moyi Ma.
Mother Meera. Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati. L. Ron Hubbard.
“Your spiritual teacher’s
the Avatar (Messiah, Teacher,
etc.)?
Hey, so’s mine!”
Ramakrishna. Jiddu Krishnamurti. Meher Baba. Yogi Bhajan.
Satya Sai Baba. Da Avatar. Rajneesh. Carlos Castaneda. Sun Myung Moon. David
Koresh. Jim Jones. Charles Manson.
Jesus
Christ. “Guru, schmuru.”
CHAPTER XXX
MAKE IT BETTER
Nothing was true of all that she had
believed, but the falsest thing of all was what she had mistaken for revealed
truth.
—François Mauriac,
Maltaverne
WHERE THEN DOES ALL OF THIS leave spirituality and enlighten- ment?
First, one of
Yogi Bhajan’s former followers has rightly noted, of that guru’s restrictive community
environment:
Certainly all those brainwashing
hours of chanting and meditation hadn’t been a worse way to spend my time than
watching TV (K. Khalsa, 1994).
Likewise, the
fact that most ashrams provide only vegetarian food need not be brought up with
any raised eyebrows. The present author, for one, has been
vegetarian since age twenty. (See www.newveg.av.org,
www.vegdining.com, www.foodrevolution.org,
www.veg.ca,
Lane [1993] and John Robbins’
[1987] Diet for a New
424
America.) That has included several years of adhering to a strict vegan (no
eggs or dairy) diet.
Famous
vegetarian rockers, interestingly, include many of the most creative and virile
stars in the music world: Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel and his
former lover Sinead “the Anti- pope” O’Connor, Kate “Wuthering Heights” Bush,
Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley,
Don “American Pie” McLean, Natalie
Mer- chant, Stevie Nicks and Sarah McLachlan. Also, Tom Scholz—the
4.8 GPA M.I.T. Engineering graduate,
mastermind guitarist/song- writer behind the group Boston—“guitar god” Jeff
Beck, Tom Pet- ty, Ozzy Osbourne, Paul McCartney, George Harrison ... Ringo ...
and, ironically, Meat Loaf.
One may choose to focus on things like “hard-working disciples subsisting on [allegedly
inadequate] vegetarian diets” or the ab- sence of television as if they were
part of the destructive “weird- ness” of any “cult-like” situation. That,
however, only dilutes the rest of one’s objections to the real problems with the world’s spiri- tual paths. (Full disclosure:
By choice, I have no TV, either.)
The supposed
differences between traditional and nontradi- tional religions are, further,
again far less marked than one might like to believe:
[T]he community that is
spontaneously forming around An- drew [Cohen] in the midst of this modern,
materialistic soci- ety so closely resembles the followings of the great
Masters of ancient times (said
complimentarily in [Cohen, 1992]).
No doubt that
assertion was true, in celebrating Cohen’s re- enacting of the countless, more
notable guru-roles played before his
own easily forgettable part in world history. But it is also valid in terms of
reading backwards from the reported problems
within and around Cohen to ascribe similar dysfunctionalities to earlier,
archaic communities:
[M]uch of the literature on
Christianity in its first century of existence depicts the early Christians in
totalistic and au- thoritarian terms (Robbins and Anthony, 1982).
Amazingly,
Anthony and Robbins use that as an argument in
favor of allowing our world’s authoritarian “god-men” to operate unchecked. The Catholic Church has turned out so well, after all....
* * *
Given a dozen or more disciples and
a guru-figure, the psychologi- cal dynamics inherent in the situation render it
largely irrelevant whether the “one true/best guru” they are devotedly
following is Jesus, Rajneesh or Da Savior, etc. Nor would the organizations
created around those various gurus be particularly distinguishable after
several centuries or millennia of cultural assimilation. Fur- ther, like it or
not, what Adi Da’s disciples believe of him, or what Cohen’s followers accept
of his claimed “perfection” and salvific po- tential, or what I once believed
of Yogananda, is nowhere even one whit more ridiculous than what Christians
believe of Jesus.
Or, compare L.
Ron Hubbard’s stories of Xenu and Teegeeack against the biblical Garden of Eden
and Fall of Man. Taking each side equally literally, there is truly nothing to
choose between them, in terms of (im)plausibility. Likewise, consider the idea
that God would tell a prophet or a group of people how they should pre- pare
food in order for it to be acceptable to Him. Were that notion not presented in
an “acceptable,” traditional context, it would be seen as a height of cultist
absurdity. Indeed, it is far beyond any “weirdness” one could possibly ascribe
to vegetarianism, for exam- ple. Yet, kosher foods get produced today all the
same, with a spe- cial version of Coke® even being sold for Passover (Alter, 2004).
It is equally
obvious that no such thing as “brainwashing” is inherently necessary in order to
get people to ardently believe in ideas which, in the cold light of day, make
no sense at all. Indeed, it should be
clear to anyone not already committed to one side or the other that the taking
of Jesus Christ as the sole Son of God is no more, and no less peculiar, than is the regard for a spiritual teacher
and his wife as being the “parents” of humanity. Yet, be- liefs like the latter
have been claimed to be induced gradually and deceptively, via withheld information, love-bombing, sleep depriva- tion and other “mind control”
techniques. The former “reasonable” delusion, on the other hand, occurs
completely naturally and un- forced, with its conversions even being actively
welcomed by large segments of our everyday society.
The idea that
“I used to be ‘brainwashed’ into thinking that some Guru was the Savior of
humanity, but now I’ve recovered enough to be able to think clearly, and I
realize that Jesus is the Savior,” may or may not strike the reader as being
completely hi- larious. It is also, however,
an eye-opening window into how even
the most ridiculous ideas can be
taken as being completely “nor- mal” and “safe,” if enough people believe in
them.
Conversely, you
may be safely and traditionally Jewish, for example, and believe, on the basis
of holy scriptures written by the relevant ancient sages, that the Messiah is
yet to come (cf. Rich, 2001). But then how
do you know he won’t come from Korea, for example? How do you distinguish
“false” messiahs from the “true” one that you’re expecting to come any day now?
(And remember: Generally, if you fail to believe the “real” Messiah when he
makes the same claims as the “false” ones do, your salvation is toast. Good reason to believe, then, to be on the
safe side.) Is it by his manifesting of miraculous “signs and wonders” ... a la
Sai Baba? By his claimed physical
healing of others ... a la Yogananda? By his downplaying
of the claims made on his behalf, i.e., “Only the true Messiah denies his
divinity”? By his “divine love,” as vouched for by his earliest followers on down, all of whom would probably
have felt (i.e., imagined/projected) the same love and peace flowing from Jim
Jones or the messianic Elvis Presley? By the characteristics explicated in your
holy scriptures—the authors of which were surely no more wise or reliable than
are the contemporary likes of Cohen, Da and Wilber?
Would the
“real” Messiah reportedly own a machine-gun fac- tory? Presumably not; but yet,
as every devotee of the sun and moon knows, “God works in mysterious ways”—who
are we to question the Divine, even in His human forms? If the Messiah doesn’t
conform to what the prophets of old said to expect, perhaps those ancient
prophets got it wrong, right? Plus, Jesus himself overturned the tables of the
money-lenders, even if not utilizing submachine guns in that, as a real “Rambo-dhisattva”—some things just
require force.
If God spoke to
Adam and to Abraham, why shouldn’t He speak equally clearly to Ramakrishna and
Sai Baba? Conversely, though, if none of the top forty “sages” of today are what they claim
to be, what makes you think that things were any different for the equally “authentic” prophets millennia ago? Realistically, given
the absence of the scientific method and the corresponding greater de-
gree of superstition, those aged figures could only have been even less reliable.
Whether one is
devoutly believing that a messianic Santa Claus lived two thousand years ago,
or that Santa Claus is incar- nate today, or that the real Santa
Claus is yet to come on some
long-anticipated Christmas Eve in
the future, all are equally child- ish beliefs in something which blatantly doesn’t exist. To regard one of those fairy tales as being
believable, and the others as ri- diculous or “obviously cultish,” is more than
I would personally be prepared to do.
If and when it turns out that the fat guy in the red suit at your local mall/ashram isn’t the “real”
Santa Claus, then, you might wisely take the hint, rather than sincerely
searching throughout other malls across the world, convinced that one of them
may har- bor the genuine article.
Further, if
someone keeps sneaking down your chimney in the middle of the night and
molesting your wife or daughters while claiming to be a “Perfect Santa Claus
Master,” you’d want to know about it, right?
The real Santa Claus, though, would at least
know where all the naughty girls live. Now there’s a list worth checking twice!
* * *
The degree to which one is impressed
by any purported sage’s re- alization of a permanently enlightened, witnessing
consciousness, will depend on what one takes the origin of self-awareness to
be. That is, it will hinge on whether one believes that such witnessing
self-awareness is an essential characteristic of Spirit and of one’s
realization of That, or rather takes it as deriving from mere bio- chemical
reactions in the brain. For, in the latter case, such “reali- zation” would
indeed not be anything to get excited about. Either way, though, such “I am”
awareness exists with our without the presence of thoughts in one’s mental
milieu.
Interestingly,
then, Wilber himself claims (2000a) to be able to voluntarily enter a “brain-dead” state with no alpha, beta, or theta, yet “maximum delta” brainwaves, in nirvikalpa samadhi. Indeed, he has video of that EEG posted on the Integral Naked (2004) web-
site. Presumably, none of that declaration has been exaggerated, i.e., one
assumes that he has managed to hook the machine up cor- rectly, and is not
otherwise tampering with the results. If so, though, simply demonstrating the
parapsychological component (if any) of that claim under properly controlled
conditions could net him a cool million dollars at James Randi’s JREF, in his Parapsy- chological Challenge. (My
own impression is that such abilities might well be comparable to past
incidents of yogis being able to put their hearts into a fast flutter,
and then claiming
that they had
“stopped” the heartbeat [cf.
Koestler, 1960]. That is, even valid claims are likely to be simple, untapped capabilities
of the physical body—akin to the suspended animation sometimes accompanying
hypothermia in humans, and now induced in mice via low doses of hydrogen
sulfide. I, at least, would by now be surprised if there were anything
“mystical” or paranormal about that.)
The same
million-dollar qualifying nature would of course ap- ply to the purported
healing abilities of Barbara Ann Brennan, for example. Those are indeed
claimed to be demonstrated regularly
at her healing school (www.barbarabrennan.com)
in Boca Raton, Florida.
Brennan has
been regarded by the Da-admiring Elizabeth Kübler-Ross as being “one of the
best spiritual ... healers in the Western hemisphere.” Back in my “believer”
days, I paid through the figurative nose for healing sessions with two of her
graduates. One of them, grossly guilty of “playing psychologist” in his ap-
pointed hour, has since acted as a dean at her school. The benefi- cial effect
of their healings on me? None at all, of course.
The dozen most
frequently given excuses for claimed paranor- malists not “putting their money
where their mouths are” have already been compiled by Randi (2002). No sense reinventing that wheel, then.
For my own
part, I am well past the point of accepting any parapsychological claims
without them having been proved under appropriately controlled conditions.
* * *
No skeptic needs to “look through
the microscope,” or attempt to develop paranormal abilities himself, in order
to validly have an opinion about whether the claims of purported mystics and
healers are valid. Rather, it is more than sufficient for skeptics to insist
that such abilities be demonstrated in experiments designed to di- rectly or
indirectly test for their existence, e.g., to distinguish one set of microscope
slides from another at a better than “guessing” level.
You say you can
see different auras around different people? Fine: Take two people, hidden
behind baffles, with only their sup- posed energy fields extending beyond, for
those to be visible to you. Ensure that there is no possibility of “cheating”
or cueing. If you can really see their auras, you will be able to tell who is
behind which baffle, in a series of trials, at a better than chance level.
You believe
you can do astral remote viewing? Great: There’s a five-digit number written down on a
piece of paper, tacked to a wall in a
specified location. It will be visible to you if, and only if, you can actually
travel to that location in your astral body on an appointed day. If you can
really do that viewing, then, you will have no difficulty at all in discerning the specific number
in each of a series of trials.
Those are
inexpensive, definitive, “yes-or-no” experiments—as opposed to, say, Marilyn
Schlitz’s recent “remote viewings” of “tourist sites in Rome from her home in
Detroit” (Gorski, 2001), or Ingo Swann’s
purported subtle jaunts to Jupiter (the planet) in the late 1970s (Randi,
1982). Such elementary, not-subject-to-interpre- tation tests do not depend on
any new theory, or on what the laws of physics may or may not allow. Rather,
they simply ask that paranormalists demonstrate their claimed abilities to “use
their microscopes” under properly controlled (e.g., double-blind) condi- tions,
where they can’t be fooling themselves or mistaking imagi- nation for reality.
Both of the above definitive experiments, and many others like
them, have been performed numerous times. (See Lane [1997]
and Blackmore [1983]; plus the simple and correspondingly devastating [though unfortunately not double-blind] tests of Therapeutic Touch done by elementary schoolgirl Emily Rosa, related in
Seidman [2001] and Randi [2003a].) That, though, has only been to the un-
fortunate acute embarrassment, and subsequent denial and ex- cuse-making, of
the tested individuals. For, their claimed para- normal abilities have
invariably turned out to be merely imagined.
Worse, with
regard to even “genuine enlightenment”: As Rich- ard Feynman could easily have
noted, the mere feeling of being “one
with all reality”—i.e., of having “no boundary” in conscious- ness—for example,
does not mean that you really are thus
undi- vided. After all, each one of us has all manner of internally pro- duced
feelings which have no objective correspondent. Until you can produce some
verifiable artifact of knowledge through such purported superconscious states
(whether astral, causal, witness- ing, nondual, or whatever) which you could
not have gotten any other way, it remains an utterly unsubstantiated claim, which any-
one can make. Nor can you yourself
know whether your own experi- ences in those states are ontologically real, or
merely imagined.
Witnessing
consciousness (i.e., self-awareness) can coexist with any physical,
mental or parapsychological conditions, includ-
ing indulgence in sex, alcohol, and
drugs. Conversely, the latter may quite validly be used toward one’s own
“spiritual awakening,” depending on one’s preferences and constitution. If
transcendent, witnessing awareness is anything short of “Spirit looking through
you,” however, that same awakening, whether temporary or long- term, will most likely
have no more ontological reality than a tulku’s
rainbow. If you’re having fun getting the rational mind out of the way via
meditation, drugs, or trance, great; but as a life’s goal or center, beyond
pure selfishness....
Our world’s
“sages” in general, even when they are being hon- est, again consistently
misinterpret utterly normal phenomena as being paranormal, and have mistaken
innumerable hallucinations for meaningful visions. They have, that is,
regularly proven them- selves to be unable to distinguish between “real”
mystical experi- ences, and merely imagined ones. Consequently, no one need
feel obliged to take seriously their equally confident claims, filtered through the same
addled mindset, as to
even something so basic as the existence and nature of Spirit.
Conversely, if one chooses to believe in the existence of That, it is in spite of the veracity of our world’s
“meditation masters,” not because of their
“personal au- thority.”
* * *
Half of the practical problem with
the very idea of witnessing and/or nondual enlightenment is that such a
realization, even if it is ontologically real rather than just a subjective shift, regards eve- rything equally. It
thus, even in the standard and wholly noncon- troversial accepted
understandings, inherently does nothing what- soever to make one a better
person (via undoing
one’s psychological kinks or otherwise), or to make the world
a better place.
One could, in all
seriousness, be the greatest living Realizer, and still be a pe- dophile,
rapist or murderer.
Conversely, no
crime or misbehavior, no matter how heinous, perpetrated by such a great
“sage,” could do anything to disprove his or her claimed realization. Thus, Ramakrishna’s pedophilia, for example, “only shows how difficult it is for people
afflicted with that orientation to grow past it,” and says nothing about his
reali- zation: He was still
“indubitably” a “great sage.”
Indeed, his behav- iors may even be
used to validate one’s own comparable sadhana.
(As to why Sai Baba’s alleged pedophilia would not be equally tol- erable, given
his fully comparable claims to divinity: it basically
depends on whom you started out
naïvely believing to be “authen- tic” in the sagely arena.) The likes of Da,
too, even given all of his alleged abuses, could still be Self-realized, just
“patterned by partying behaviors.”
Hell, you could
be Jack the Ripper, attain to nondual aware- ness, and go right on ripping. You
could be Adolf Hitler himself, not
merely “mystically awakened” but nondually enlightened, and it wouldn’t affect
your actions one damned bit.
That exalted
nondual realization—so beloved of Ken Wilber and Drukpa Kunley—even if
ontologically real, is then worth pur- suing ... why, exactly?
Of course, when
one has “pledged enlightenment” for so long,
it must be worth something. Even
if auras and subtle energies don’t
exist, even if parapsychology was bogus from the beginning, even if every
hoped-for superphysical phenomenon falls by the wayside, nondual enlightenment
must be worth something.
Mustn’t it?
* * *
There is no question that the “mind
control” techniques cited ear- lier exist, that they are used, and that they do
a lot to make things get worse, faster—as the deindividuation, force-feeding,
humilia- tion and sleep deprivation did in Zimbardo’s study. But even with- out
them, in a “safe, traditional” religion, as soon as you have ac- cepted the
“divine guidance” and/or infallibility of those above you, you cannot disobey.
And as soon as you have bought fully into the purported existence of hellfire
and damnation or the like, you can- not leave that thought-environment without
risking your eternal soul. That is, once deeply accepted, such “reasonable” and
socially accepted beliefs again leave one no more able to freely choose to walk
away from the traditional religion to face the possibility of eternal
damnation, than one is free to walk away from a “destruc- tive cult” and face a
similar future.
Yet, that does
not lessen the reality that people of sound mind and body, fully functional in
the real world, will convert completely
voluntarily, under no duress at all, to exactly such restrictive sets of
tenets. In the face of such facts, the idea that “cult” members believe wacky
things only because they were fed the belief system in incremental “bits and
pieces,” in the midst of love-bombing or the like, rather than having the
entire theology dispassionately explained to them up front,
is not supportable. The worst
negatives
may well not be presented until one
has publicly committed to the best of the salvific positives. But those
negatives are still just the flip side of the positives; one readily accepts
them, if it means be- ing part of the “saved” group.
And we all want
to be part of the “in” group, or to be “chosen” by God, right? And to have the
social support of others who are equally “special”? Why else would we find
people barely escaping from nontraditional salvific “cults” to then join
“safe,” nontradi- tional religions? For the latter, in their early years of
devotion and obedience to “the one true Savior” or to the relevant apocalyptic
“prophets” preceding or following him, were
indistinguishable from the former.
One should
therefore not underestimate the human need to believe in Something—Anything—particularly
if believing in that Big Something can be both a means of salvation and a route
to so- cial approval. Our species has never needed to be coerced into be-
lieving “six impossible things before breakfast.” Rather, we have always done
that quite willingly, even in the most ordinary cir- cumstances. Indeed, the
acceptance of the most hellish, fear- inducing of those beliefs occurs, with
full social sanction, as part of every one of our world’s “safe, traditional”
religions.
(With equal
willingness, newly freed people will vote for com- munist candidates if they
think, from their own past and present experience, that their lives will
improve in the short term for hav- ing that oppressive but comforting system
reinstated [Hoo, 2005]. No “brainwashing” is
required in any of that; it’s just the sad na- ture of the species.)
Nor is the
degree of “mature obedience” given by devoted Christians to Jesus any different
from that given by any other loy- al followers to their guru-figure: If (the
Son of) God asks you to do something, you do it, right?
The only “difference” is that Christians have found the “one true/best,
living Savior,” of whom every bi- zarre positive claim is necessarily “true”—as
it was for Rajneesh, Jim Jones and David Koresh, etc., in the eyes of their
devoted dis- ciples in their own times.
Contrary to the
frequently invoked comparison, the existence of fool’s gold (i.e., “false
gurus”) does not mean that real gold
(i.e., enlightenment and “true gurus”) exists. Rather, it simply means that
there are a lot of fools out there, who naïvely believe their eyes when they should rather be applying
every possible rational test to the claims being placed before them.
I should know: I
used to be one of those very same fools.
As David
Lane has often noted, we would not think of buying a used car—whether sold by Bhagavan Das,
Werner Erhard or oth- erwise—without first “kicking the tires.” Yet, we do not
think to equally properly question the assertions made by our world’s “god-
men” before giving up our independence and willingly/blindly fol- lowing them.
Further, we again do that too often on
the “good ad- vice” of the “geniuses” and elders in transpersonal and integral
psy- chology. For, we quite reasonably assume that they have done at least
minimal research, and thus that they would be in a position to offer more
intelligent and informed opinions than our own.
Big
mistake.
* * *
Of course, one is still free, even
after all that, to believe that Jesus raised others (e.g., Lazarus) from the
dead—as, it is claimed, did Yogananda and Meher Baba. (And as has Scientology:
“Hubbard claims they brought
a dead child back to life by ordering the thetan
back and telling him to take over the body again” [Cooper,
1971].) And, that Christ
fed the multitudes with manifested foodstuffs—as has Sai Baba. And, that J. C. rose from the grave
himself—as, it is claimed, did Yogananda’s guru, Sri Yukteswar.
As Lalich (2004) noted, however—apparently with uninten-
tional yet heavy irony—in the context of our world’s potentially harmful nontraditional groups:
Countless examples—from making
preposterous claims of raising the dead to taking multiple wives to committing
... murder ... clearly illustrate that some [so-called] cult mem- bers make
seemingly irrational, harmful, and sometimes fa- tal decisions. Yet these acts
are committed in a context that makes perfect sense at the time to those
who enact them and are, in fact, consistent with an
ideology or belief system that they trust represents their highest
aspirations....
Some [alleged]
cults are totalistic when they are exclu- sive in their ideology (i.e., it is
sacred, the only way).
Raising the dead: traditional Christianity. Multiple wives: the Mormons,
in their early days.
Committing
murder in an ideological context where it makes “perfect sense” at the time:
the witch hunts, the Crusades, etc.
“The only way”:
insert your preferred traditional religion here, whether petrified of condoms
and masturbation, swigging Kosher- Cola, or fixated on modesty-enforcing
burkas.
Further, when
considering the purported “divinity” of the founders of any of our world’s
traditional religions, keep in mind that had any of the more recent
“Christ-like” figures lived two thousand years ago, we would today know none of
the reported “dirt” on them. That is, their “divinity” would remain intact, as
Ramakrishna’s almost did. Conversely,
were Jesus alive today, all of his “Last Temptation”-like human indiscretions would have been put into print by journalists and
disgruntled former followers. So, it
is really just an accident of history that “Christ-like” gurus such as Sai Baba
or Ramakrishna have been exposed enough for one to reasonably question their
divinity and recognize the reportedly dangerous nature of their closed
communities of disciples, while others such as Jesus have not.
I had been trying to figure out the
difference between a [so- called] cult and a religion—and had decided it was
only two things: a matter of time and conformity (Sherrill,
2000).
All
religions, except perhaps
the very earliest
and most prim- itive, begin as new religious
movements. That is, they begin as movements based on spiritual innovation usually
in a state of high oppositional tension with prevailing religious practices.
Often, they are begun by charismatic religious en- trepreneurs (Zablocki, 1998).
Conversely:
In its first thousand years, the
[Catholic] Church grew from a tiny, underground [so-called] cult into a vast, multinational power (Aarons and Loftus,
1998).
Similarly:
Like many groups that were formerly enfantes terribles, Sci- entology, if it
continues in its current clean-up campaign, may one day become one of the
world’s most respected groups or
Churches (Cooper, 1971).
Indeed, as
Scientology’s John Travolta once put it (in Gould,
1998): “I’m sure Christianity had some problems
too in its first fifty years.” (Tell that to Lisa
McPherson. Oh, you can’t. )
Saturday Night Fever or
Saturday Night Mass. You decide.
[O]ne asks oneself how much is
really known about the foun- ders and originators of the great classical
religions of the past? How did they really
begin? What were the true motives
of their founders?. Supposing that the world rolls on for a
thousand years what
then will the mythology of Scientol-
ogy look like? And what stories will
people be telling of Mr. Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, his teachings and his first
disci- ples? (Evans, 1973).
In any case, if
enough people believe that Jesus Christ (or Da Savior) is the sole Son of God,
given to this world via Virgin/Dildo Birth and ascended into Glory, it ceases
to be “weird,” and the be- lief begins to be “inherited” by the children of
each parent follower of that “one true/best guru.” Comparably, as Strelley
(1987) noted, even pathological events and beliefs within Rajneesh’s ashram
“all seemed familiar and ‘normal’ because that was the world we had built and
were living in every minute of our lives.” Indeed, as a general principle:
A community is a community. Just as
it is bizarre to those not in it, so it is natural to those who live it from within
(Goffman, 1961).
If enough
people believed that Adi Da was “the greatest Real- izer,” etc., the same
homogenization and inheritance of belief would
occur, and it would become weird to not believe
that he was “the greatest.”
Thankfully, that is not likely
to happen.
Conversely,
broadcasting the original meaning of Jesus’ teach- ings in the Bible Belt today
would produce every bit as much un- rest as could be found in Rome two thousand
years ago. It is not only contemporary so-called cults, after all, who
encourage their members to “go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor”
(Mat- thew 19:21). Nor is that the only point of comparison:
Many [alleged] cults put great
pressure on new members to leave their families, friends, and jobs to become
immersed in the group’s major purpose. This isolation tactic is one of the
... most common mechanisms of control and enforced depend- ency (Singer,
2003).
Likewise:
He that loveth father or mother more
than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is
not worthy of me.
And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me,
is not worthy of me (Matthew 10:37-8).
With all that,
accepting a guru-disciple relationship in any context clearly calls for an
attitude of “meditator beware”:
Of one hundred persons who take up the
spiritual life, eighty turn out to
be charlatans, fifteen insane, and only five, may- be, get a glimpse
of the real truth. Therefore beware (Viveka-
nanda, in [Nikhilananda, 1996]).
[I]t is my belief that 90% of the so-called masters in the mod- ern
world are not enlightened at all (Harvey, 2000).
Of course, the
“best” of the guru-figures we have covered herein—e.g., Ramakrishna, whom
Harvey still quotes approvingly
—would account for a good amount of the remaining 10%. (The fact that Harvey—“probably the preeminent
mystic of our day” [Knight, 2003]—ridiculously considers
the same 90% of “unenlight- ened masters” to be “occult
magicians,” holding their disciples in sway via real, supernatural powers, need
not concern us here. Comparably, for the born-again Tal Brooke, Sai Baba was
viewed as being closer to a literal “Antichrist” than a simple opportunistic
conjuror. Yet projection and transference, which factor overwhelm- ingly into
the guru-disciple relationship, are neither “occult” nor “from the devil.” Or was
the Beatles’ earth-scooping, bladder- control-losing effect on their fans, too,
based in “occult magic”?)
Nor was the
situation any better in the days before our mod- ern world:
Buddha said that the chances of
encountering a genuine teacher and getting enlightened were about on a par with the likelihood that a turtle coming to the
surface in the mid- dle of the ocean would put his head through a single ring
tossed on the waves (Butterfield, 1994).
Even having ostensibly found that “ring,”
Stan Trout, a former
decade-long swami follower of Muktananda, rightly observed:
Those who willingly put aside their
own autonomy, their
own moral judgment, to obey even a Christ,
a Buddha, or a Krish- na, do so at risk of losing a great deal more than they can hope to gain [italics
added].
One might
take comfort, then,
in the fact that Ramana
Mahar- shi himself not only accepted no disciples, but had no human
guru: “Guru is God or the Self.” (At other times, however, Maharshi ac- tually
regarded Mount Arunachala—and presumably “all of the siddhas in it”—as his guru.) Aurobindo too (1953) “never took any
formal initiation from anyone.” The same is true of the Buddha.
Whatever
spiritual evolution (real or imagined) might be real- ized under a guru, then,
can obviously also be gotten without one. And given all of the problems we have
noted with guru-figures, disciples, and their relationships, there is a lot to
be said for erring on the side of caution in that regard.
Nor will simply
asking for an honest opinion from the current followers of any purported sage
keep one safe in all that. For, in the vast majority of cases,
the loyal disciples who defend
the “noble cause” are simply
those who have not yet been sufficiently harmed by the guru. Or, they have not
yet gotten close enough to him/her and the inner circle for long enough to
comprehend what is really going on. Or, they are so close to the guru, and in
need of preserv- ing that position, as to lose all perspective, having wholly
set aside their ability to impartially evaluate his actions, as they must if
they are to be “good disciples.”
As the head of
Adi Da’s Hermitage Service Order expressed his
view of Da and his “Teachings” (in Colin, et al.,
1985):
He operates with the highest of
integrity.... It is the most genuine thing I have ever encountered in my entire
life.
Likewise, for another
seclusive “avatar”:
Jim [Jones] is a man of absolutely
unimpeachable character (in Layton, 1998).
Eugene Chaikin, a Californian
attorney who became a mem- ber of the [People’s] Temple, [described Jim Jones]
as the most loving, Christ-like human being he had ever met. An-
other law graduate [actually, the
assistant district attorney in San Francisco], Tim Stoen, called Jones “the
most com- passionate, honest and courageous human being the world contains” (Storr, 1996).
Similarly for Heaven’s Gate:
One early follower [of Applewhite
and Nettles] recalled, “I just felt drawn to them. You could feel the goodness”
(Lalich, 2004).
One takes such
positive evaluations seriously—with the above being indistinguishable from the
gushing which any loyal disciple would do over his or her
“genuine/best/greatest” guru-figure—only at one’s own grave risk.
So rather send
a “deep, devotional bow” to Jim Jones than to the likes of Adi Da or Andrew
Cohen, if you must at all. For at least
Jones, like Applewhite, being long deceased, can do no fur- ther harm to
persons so foolish as to trust him.
* * *
Rick Ross (2005c)
gives ten characteristics to look for in a safe group and/or leader. Those
range from the encouraging of critical thinking and individual autonomy in the
followers, to the accep- tance by the leader of constructive criticism, to a
democratic envi- ronment, to willing
financial disclosure on the part of
the organiza- tion.
Good luck with
finding any number of those characteristics in any “authentic, spiritually
transformative” environment, though (or
even in the typical business corporation, for that matter). For such a group
begins, by definition, with a leader who is more “spir- itually evolved”—i.e., who ostensibly sees truth more clearly—than
the people around him. That is, he merits his position as leader not merely for having a greater, studied
understanding of one or an- other set of holy scriptures, but rather for
possessing a higher de- gree of enlightenment.
“Fortunately,”
though, the eager aspirants around him can at- tain to that same height if they
simply follow his teachings and instructions. Thence follows role-playing,
respect-hungering, and the understandable desire to distance oneself from
anything that might interfere with one’s most-valued spiritual progress (e.g.,
at- tachments, family, sex, etc.). And with the need to obediently en-
dure anything which might accelerate
the realization of one’s be- coming “as great as” the leader himself is, as
quickly as possible, it’s all downhill from there.
So it is, by
now, in no way surprising that even the best of our world’s spiritual
communities have been found to quickly degener- ate into “problematic” nests,
leaving their idealistic followers won- dering, “Where did it all go wrong?”
The point,
again, is not that brainwashing, mind control, de- ceptive recruiting and enforced isolation do not exist, for they sure-
ly do. But even without them, things are much
worse than would be imagined by
theorists who point to such issues as being distin- guishing characteristics of
so-called cults.
If you cannot bring
yourself to accept that, you are free to con- tinue believing that the Roman Catholic
Church, the U.S. Marines,
and the average prison, for example, are “safe” places to be. And good luck to
you in that—you’re going to need it, should people you care about ever become
trapped in those “non-cultic” environ- ments.
* * *
The
collection of “enlightened” individuals we have considered here are again in no way the worst of our world’s spiritual teachers,
but are rather among the universally recognized best. The disregard for
the guru-disciple relationship evinced herein thus has nothing to do with
simply rejecting it, whether wisely or blindly, in favor of an alternative
emphasis on individuality and independence, with- out regard for the benefits
of learning from a teacher wiser than oneself. Rather, such disdain is the
simple and unavoidable out- come of recognizing the high probability that, in
any given case, the guru-disciple
relationship is very likely to do much more harm than good.
Conversely, the
relevant question is not why anyone should be “anti-guru,” but rather: How
could anyone, in the face of all of the long-extant reported issues quoted
herein, still be “pro-guru”? If the assertion is that the good mixed in
with the bad (for any given spiritual teacher) offsets the latter, the
appropriate response is that a
mixture of nectar and poison is more dangerous than is one of poison alone.
After all, animals die from drinking anti-freeze be- cause it tastes
good. Were it not for the good, they would not simul- taneously swallow the bad.
As Dick Anthony
(et al., 1987) quite unsuspectingly put it:
[A] number of group leaders who
evolved into dangerous, au- thoritarian tyrants seemed truly to have ... loving
kindness, generosity, selflessness. These leaders were extremely dan- gerous
precisely because they did combine such an unlikely mix of extreme beneficence
and extreme abusiveness within them. The beneficence was prominent first,
attracted a large, devoted following, and then gradually
gave way to a “dark side” that came increasingly into expression over ten or
twenty years, imperceptibly turning heaven into hell for the followers.
The point which
Anthony has completely missed, of course, is that the hitherto “peacenik”
student guards in Zimbardo’s prison study likewise combined “extreme
beneficence and extreme abu- siveness” within themselves. Indeed, each one of
those eventual “Nazis” again began the study congenially, only having his
tyran- nical authoritarianism brought
out later by the closed,
hierarchical environment.
* * *
If all of this seems too cynical,
simply compare the reported behav- iors we have seen herein with how any
sensible and self-honest person would behave. Couldn’t you (outside of the eventual, per- spective-losing effects of
imperial role-playing) do better than every one of the respected spiritual
figures evaluated here, in guiding other people’s evolution, regardless of
whether the enlightenment claimed by each of these so-called sages is real or
imagined? Even if your every hidden
indiscretion was made public, wouldn’t you still come off looking like a better
human being than any of these bozos?
Then, factor
in the orders-of-magnitude difference between
the disinfected, hagiographic versions of the lives of undisputed “sag-
es” such as Ramakrishna and Krishnamurti, versus their real na- tures. And in
doing that, never be so naïve as to imagine that the distortions, cover-ups,
group-think, wishful thinking and outright fabrications applied to any claimed saint’s
daily behavior by his vested-interest disciples would not be effected just as
much with regard to his or her visionary experiences, other “miracles,” and
overall “compassionate” nature.
I would
personally still like for most of the
fairy tales told in the name of spirituality to be true. The problem which I
have by now in accepting any of them is not that I would a priori or “scien-
tifically” find it difficult to
believe that human volition can affect the behavior of matter. Indeed, I would
still actively prefer for auras, chakras, subtle energies, astral travel,
manifested “loaves and fishes” and their ilk to exist. The issue I have by now is simply that the sources of information in all of those
“miraculous” and mystical regards are so unreliable as to be less than
worthless. Further, the claimed phenomena fail uniformly, on every point on
which they have been properly tested, to stand up to simple ra- tional
questioning and reproducibility.
* * *
If people were really well-informed, they would be immune to bad gurus (Robert Thurman, in [Watanabe, 1998]).
Well, you are now “really
well-informed.” And being thus wise, knowing of the Dalai Lama’s admiration for
Drukpa Kunley, and being cognizant of Richard Baker’s reported behaviors at the
SF Zen Center ... you would not be surprised to learn that Thurman is still a
loyal admirer of the homophobic Lama, after having been a friend of SFZC during
Baker’s apocalyptic tenure there. Nor would you be taken aback to find that
Thurman, in spite of his own “im- munity to bad gurus” and foolish pandits
after a lifetime of spiri- tual study and practice ... is a founding member of
Wilber’s Inte- gral Institute. Nor would you nearly fall off your chair in
learning that he has released a recording of dialogs on Buddhism and poli- tics
between himself ... and alternative medicine’s Deepak
Chopra.
Interestingly,
both Thurman and the Dalai Lama endorsed Chopra’s (2000)
book, How to Know God ... as did Ken
Wilber and Uri Geller. Thurman called it the “most important book about God for
our times.” Not to be outdone, the Mikhail
Gorbachev elevated Chopra to the position of being “undoubtedly one of the most
lucid and inspired philosophers of our times.”
And all of
that, while Thurman was simultaneously being named as one of Time magazine’s twenty-five most
influential peo- ple in 1997, and viewed as “America’s number one Buddhist” by the New
York Times. The point being that, with no particular dis- respect intended
toward Dr. Thurman, even the best and most- esteemed figures in Buddhism and elsewhere
demonstrably cannot be relied upon to do other than lead us directly to spiritual teachers whom we would do much better to avoid, should we make
the mis- take of following their “really well-informed” advice.
Even someone
like the Buddhist
teacher Jack Kornfield
has again failed to do even minimally adequate research regarding the
alleged unpunished breaking of rules in the East, before offering a confident,
watertight opinion. That is, he has presented a superfi- cially convincing, but
ultimately utterly false theory, as if it were
inarguable, researched fact. Further, he was still maintaining that
indefensible opinion nearly two decades after
his own days teach- ing at Trungpa’s Naropa during its most “wild and crazy”
period. Those, too, were its most overtly “cult-like” times, as is painfully obvious for anyone with eyes even halfway
open to see such things. Few “experts” in Eastern spirituality are better informed,
or more trustworthy or level-headed, than are Thurman
and Korn- field. Yet, it is merely one small step from them and their “in-
formed” opinions to find yourself
following the likes of Trungpa,
Richard Baker, or the “Tibetan
Catholic” Dalai Lama.
Or, consider
the work of Rabbi Michael Lerner—briefly dubbed
the “guru of the White House” during the Clinton admini- stration. (During
a period of unpopularity, the Clintons also sought
advice from the Muktananda-admiring, firewalking Tony Robbins. That self-help
icon has guested on Wilber’s Integral Naked forum, and has also been an
interviewee of Andrew Cohen [1999a].) Lern-
er is a close friend of Ken Wilber, and another founding member of the Integral
Institute. And, while
his political Tikkun
organization, groups and magazine may well be “safe and nourishing”
ones, he also considers Wilber to be a “great mind,” whose “brilliance pours
out on every page” of his journals.
And then this
from the same man—Lerner—blurbing for kw’s (2001b) A Theory of Everything:
Ken Wilber is one of the most
creative spiritual thinkers alive
today, and A Theory of Everything is
an accessible taste of his brilliance. Like a masterful
conductor, he brings every- one in,
finds room for science and spirit, and creates music for the soul.
Suppose, then,
that you, as a young but dedicated spiritual seeker and/or political activist,
and an admirer of Lerner, were to attend one or another of the Tikkun
functions. And suppose that you discovered the work of Ken Wilber through that,
devouring his “brilliant” books in the following months. Not knowing any
better, you would undoubtedly be impressed by the great man’s “genius” and “compassion” on such a wide range of subjects—as I myself
was for two months, many naïve years
ago—particularly given Lerner’s endorsement of that “brilliance.”
How long would
it be, then, before you followed kw’s “good ad- vice” in those writings? How
long before you (perhaps not unlike Mr. Kowalczyk) found yourself “surrendered
completely” as a non- celebrity to a “great Realizer,” whose every alleged
“Rude Boy” abuse was being indulged in only for your own benefit, as a wise “Teaching”?
Lerner himself
has not only endorsed Andrew Cohen’s Living
Enlightenment (2002), but also been
interviewed by Cohen (2001a) in What Is Enlightenment? magazine. Dr.
Lerner has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology; Cohen, perhaps unique among human
beings, has no psychological shadow (or so he claims). He would thus sure- ly
have made a fascinating case study for Lerner, had the latter’s eyes been open
to that rare, breakthrough opportunity.
Interestingly,
other enthusiastic endorsers of Cohen’s Living Enlightenment have included Jack
Crittenden, Deepak Chopra, Lee
Lozowick, Mariana Caplan, and the late Swami Satchidanan- da himself.
Yet, “with
great power comes great responsibility.” And if one is using one’s good name in
any field to give credibility to others, one
has a grave responsibility to ensure that the latter
are actually some semblance of what they claim to be. Yet, one struggles to find any comprehension of that fact among Wilber and the
rest of these “experts.” For, if they had understood that principle at all,
they would be very humbled to realize the irreparable damage they have done in indefensibly encouraging
others to throw their lives away in “surrendering completely” to the likes of
Da and Cohen.
* * *
For my own part, the actions alleged of our world’s “fire-breathing” gurus
(e.g., at the WHAT enlightenment??! website)
and their henchmen remind me of nothing so
much as having transferred rural schools in grade seven.
The previous
year, the “alpha male” in that new environment had, I was told, been forcing
the boys in the grade below him to crawl through mud and endure other forms of
mistreatment. Why? Just because he could exercise that power—no better reason
or provocation, outside of his own insecure psychology.
Appropriately, the power-abusing boy got his comeuppance the following year, being beaten up by his
peers in grade seven.
His brave
response? To go crying to his pastoral parents about that, tearfully begging
that they move to a different community, etc., but of course making no mention
of how he had merited that retribution.
If only our
world’s guru-figures and spiritual seekers in gen- eral had as much sense as a
bunch of thirteen-year-olds. They might, in that case, consider holding their
peers and heroes re- sponsible for their reported abuses of power, i.e., “As ye
beat the crap out of others, so shall the crap be beaten out of you.” With even
that minimal application of intelligence and real compassion, there would be
far fewer simpering “Rude Boys” in the world.
Much less would those socially dysfunctional fools be celebrated for allegedly coercing others
into enduring demeaning acts “for their own good.”
* * *
The recurring phenomenon of “bad
gurus,” from which no one is immune so long as he holds on to the hope that one
or another of them can lead him closer to enlightenment, is actually completely
predictable. For, absolute power corrupts, not merely some of the time, but all (or
at least 99.99%) of the time. (It was actually in response to the 1870 papal
declaration of infallibility that Lord Ac- ton coined the relevant phrase [Allen, 2004].) Against that psycho- logical
reality, whatever public face any “sage” may show in appar- ent tolerance for
questioning by his celebrity followers or the like, is typically no more real than one’s temporary mask shown at a
news conference might be.
And beyond even
any sagely “best behavior,” human transfer- ence and projection can create a
“god” even out of a pile of shit—as Nityananda
knew well. One cannot afford
to go into any such “spir-
itual” environment with a naïvely positive attitude, hoping for the best,
seeing only the good in others while ignoring the red flags for the bad, and
trusting the guru-figure and his guards/henchmen to guide you right. For, such
Pollyanna-ish behavior is exactly, with- out exaggeration, how Jonestowns (and
Rajneeshpurams, and “true sanghas” such
as Trungpa’s and Muktananda’s and Yoganan-
da’s) get started.
No small part
of what is supposed to separate mystics from
the truly insane is exactly the ability to distinguish reality from
their own fantasies or externalized voices/visions. Yet, that ability to distinguish is exactly what is apparently lacking in “astral
moon
cannibal slaves,” subtle Allied Forces, irreconcilable reincarnations of Leonardo da Vinci, sprightly leprechauns and
Paulsen’s bad- science-fiction UFOs. And in that case, the relevant “sages”
could potentially have simply imagined/hallucinated/self-hypnotized eve- ry step of their own “enlightening”
spiritual experiences.
The preceding
point makes the fact that a person can be si- multaneously at a very high level
of spiritual development, and at a
very low level of conscious evolution along moral lines, essen- tially
irrelevant. For, if one cannot tell the difference between “real” spiritual
experiences and imagined ones, it is not simply one’s lack of moral development
or the like which invalidates the supposed wisdom in the teachings and
behaviors which are based on those same experiences.
By comparison,
a clinical schizophrenic with a high level of moral or empathic development
would still make a very dangerous leader or guru-figure. That is true however clearly
the imagined “voice of God” might be speaking to him or her and then enforced
on the world “with integrity.” It is further true even if that voice is
experienced as a nondual (e.g., One Taste) phenomenon by the mentally unstable
individual. Conversely, if one is going to surren- der one’s will to any
guru-figure, one would hope to do better than an evaluation concluding, “Sure
he’s psychotic, but he’s got a lot of integrity”!
One is then
left with very little indeed to cling to in all of this. For, if even the
widely recognized “best” Realizers apparently can- not distinguish between
hallucination and their own ostensibly valid realizations, are lesser Realizers
to be regarded as being more reliable?
Seen from that
perspective, the most that any spiritual teach- er can be is a decent, honest,
unpretentious, even-tempered and caring human being, never “divinity in the
flesh.” Yet, if even one- tenth of the allegations made against those figures
are valid, the overwhelming majority of them would fail miserably at even that
minimal, level-headed decency. Thus, the bulk of what they would wish to teach
us by their own behaviors, no sensible person would want to learn.
So even let
each of them be every bit as enlightened as they have claimed to be, then.
(Again, if these top forty spiritual
leaders are not so divine, who is?) It
makes no difference; for, with the en- demic reported character flaws which
they bring to the table, who of them could ever do more good than harm in the world? What
use, then, is their vaunted
“enlightenment”? And, if anything like karma and reincarnation exist, who could
suffer more for their al- leged actions, in future lives, than such respected
holy fools, from the “Christ-like” Ramakrishna on down?
The good news,
though, is that none of these grandiose god- figures, playing unconvincingly at
being holy, compassionate and wise, have any power whatsoever over anyone else other than what
you, or I, would give to them. Without our obedient submission and credulous swallowing of their untenable claims and
widespread exaggerations, they will dry
up and blow away as if they had never existed.
Put another
way: They need us much more than we
need them.
In the words of the formerly
born-again Hustler magazine pub- lisher, Larry Flynt (in Krassner, 1993):
I believe that Jesus was not a more
important teacher than Buddha, and that neither Jesus nor Buddha is more impor-
tant than any individual.
Please explicitly note one more thing: The apparently unstable and/or radically unreliable
“best” sagely individuals considered herein are in large part exactly the same
ones upon whose claims and authority the very existence of the realization
called “enlight- enment” is widely accepted. If they cannot be trusted in the
test- able details and paranormal claims, however, can they really be relied
upon to accurately represent the higher realizations from which they have
derived their greatest fame? If so very, very
much of what even the most revered spiritual Realizers in the history of
our globe have said or written was a probable hallucination, prov- able
misrepresentation, or demonstrable exaggeration, can you really afford to take any of their claims “on faith”?
And if not,
what are we to make of the ageless, high regard for the institution of gurus, and the belief that they can lead
you to an enlightenment which they themselves most likely do not possess beyond
mere self-delusion, via your unconditional obedience to them? Is such belief
and surrender any more of a mature, rational approach to life than is the
belief in receiving comparable secular gifts from Santa Claus, through
following his instruction to be “nice” (i.e., obedient) rather than “naughty”?
I, personally, do not believe that it is.
Of course, for
over a decade of my own life, I bought as fully as anyone into the “myth of the
totally enlightened guru.” But in my own defense, I didn’t have access to the
wide swath of information, as gathered herein, which would have convinced any
rational, thinking person that the practitioners of the “guru game” are not in any way what they present themselves as
being. Indeed, with- out the Internet and over five thousand hours of research,
I still wouldn’t have it.
You, however,
having gotten this far, do have easy
access to that information. And you can save yourself, and those you care for, from undergoing a great deal of
suffering, simply by using it wisely.
For, if we have
learned one thing from Blaise Pascal, it is that “those who play at being
angels, end up as animals.”
There may still
be more to religion and spirituality than mere hallucination, dissociation,
psychoses, transference, conformity, massive co-dependence, belongingness
needs, and hierarchical out- lets for power-tripping authoritarianism and “Rude
Boy” sadism. But the sad fact is that the above principles would fully suffice
to create exactly the situation which we see in the imprisoning guru/
savior-influenced “spiritual world” around us. Indeed, they could not help but do so.
* * *
Christopher
Reeve (2002) then summed up his noteworthy,
com- mon-sense conclusions regarding spirituality. (Reeve’s own genu- ine
spiritual interests had previously led him to investigate both Muktananda and
TM, in addition to Scientology.)
Gradually I have come to believe
that spirituality is found in the way we live our daily lives. It means
spending time thinking about others.
It should not
take “Superman” to point out what the revered avatars and theoreticians within
the spiritual marketplace have so clearly failed to put into practice for so
long, messing up others’ lives in the process while congratulating themselves
about their own supposedly shadow-less, “perfect” and nondual enlighten- ments.
Of course, we all know that consideration for others is sup- posed to be a prerequisite for the spiritual
path. That preliminary,
however, is typically forgotten
somewhere along the way to en-
lightenment:
[A]s I began to spend time with
people who’d devoted many years to meditation, people who had built their lives
around spiritual practices aimed at transcending the ego, I saw that they had
many of the same difficulties I did. Few of them be- haved more
compassionately, sensitively, or selflessly than the majority of people I knew
who didn’t meditate at all (Schwartz, 1996).
Robert Thurman
(2004) told of his own related experiences
with an acquaintance of his, widely known for being calm and holy,
who had been excluding him from participating in the dialog at a conference she
was leading. When questioned by another friend as to why he was not taking a
more active role in the conversation, Thurman replied:
“I’d love to, but So-and-so won’t
allow me to talk. It seems she has a bug in her ear about
me!” I inflected my delivery
in a nasty way, knowing full well that the friend in question, standing
nearby, was overhearing what I was saying.
It was a petty
and rude way to speak, it showed how poor my own self-control was, and I am
ashamed to tell the story. However, the reaction of the leader was an even
great- er shock. She rushed up to me, stuck her furious face inches from mine,
and shrieked at the top of her lungs, “F—— you, Bob. F—— you! How dare you say
such a thing about me!”
Further, any
enlightenment which can be negated not only by the consumption of alcohol (cf. Wilber, 2000a) but even by a bad cold (or staph
infection) is an interesting type of awakening: “I used to be enlightened, but I caught the flu.” Indeed, that
“fall” fully disproves the idea that “Great Masters, having attained their own
enlightenment, meditate only for the good of others.” That is, if the “permanent” realization of that
highest evolution can be lost by something as seemingly irrelevant as temporary
bodily illness, meditative practice is obviously being continued in order to
main- tain that state, regardless of any sage’s protests that it is being done
only “for others.”
Even without
those concerns, however, the quantity of woe- fully ignorant advice and
self-serving misrepresentation dispensed by our world’s “enlightened” individuals makes it impossible to as-
cribe any actual inherent wisdom or
intelligence-guided compas- sion to that state. The dismal lack of commitment
to reality in situations where it does not flatter the “enlightened” figure
should be another blatant red flag in that regard. It should further under-
line the danger of subverting/surrendering one’s own judgment to the alleged
“greater insight” of such individuals. Indeed, that warning exists
wholly independent of arguments as to whether
one is “childishly/blindly/submissively following” or “maturely/con-
sciously surrendering and obeying” the same figures. For, bad ad- vice from
others is best resisted regardless of what one’s own flaws or present stage of
psychological development may be.
On top of all
that, if there are a mere dozen “deeply
enlight- ened” Zen masters
on the Earth right now, for example,
that figure surely pales in comparison to the thousands if not millions
of peo- ple who have had their lives devastated by the same paths—or even by
the very same stick-wielding “wise masters.” The fact that such followers may
too often lack the independence and initiative to realize how much they have
given up in thus being willingly mistreated does not in any way excuse the
actions of the “superior beings” who sit in authority over them.
Following in
the footsteps of such “sagely” individuals, then, could hardly be a confident
step toward alleviating even one’s own suffering. Much less could it be a
sensible means of enacting a bo- dhisattva vow to liberate all others, for that
same vow would surely imply easing others’ suffering on the average,
not increasing it.
Of what use is any future or enlightenment that does not re- store
a just and fully human world? (Marin, 1995).
By contrast, in
cultivating our own independence, learning from our own errors rather than “making other people’s mistakes,” and
attempting to understand how our own actions affect others, we may at least
know that we’re heading in the right direction as human beings. That is so even
if such a direction is, in practice, too often the exact opposite of where the “spiritually
enlightened” guru-figures of this world, and their apologists, would have us
obe- diently go.
Further, real
life provides more than enough “learning experi- ences” for each one of us,
should we choose to take advantage of those
toward introspection and personal change.
No one needs a
guru-figure or a constricting, independence-robbing ashram to fab-
ricate crises for that.
I described to my friends my own
disillusionment with spiri- tual practice, and my discovery that craving and
greed infect the spiritual life just as they do every other aspect of life.
“What I thought I was leaving behind,” I said, “I found right here [at
Kripalu]—the kleshas [afflictions],
the erroneous be- liefs, creating new spiritual knots” (Cope, 2000).
As Butterfield (1994) then reasonably concluded, after years of
devotedly following Trungpa and his successor, Osel Tendzin:
I gave up trying to base personal
relationships on dharma consciousness, or the bodhisattva ideal, neither of
which led to my establishing an enduring bond with another human being. Instead
I looked for what I could do at any given mo- ment to respect and care about
myself and others, communi- cate honestly, and live my needs and experiences as
they ac- tually arose, with no thought that I was on a spiritual jour- ney or
had to bring everything to an all-consuming path.
Or, as Carlos Castaneda’s potential successor—who later wise-
ly repudiated that role—came to realize:
[M]y incursion in the world of
Carlos Castaneda gave me many things. It showed me the reality of relying on
yourself and not projecting your fantasies upon others. It showed me that the
only true magic is “ordinary magic” and that the most important thing in life
is the way we treat each other (Tony Karam, in [Wallace,
2003]).
Deborah Boehm (1996; italics added), following her own expe-
riences with Zen Buddhism in Japan, likewise noted:
I realized now that any
enlightenment I might ever attain would come from living, from making mistakes,
from think- ing things through, just as the most valuable lessons I had learned
in Kyoto about how to be a less-flawed mortal mam- mal took place outside the meditation hall.
No new guru, no
new religion, no new church or ostensibly channeled readings are needed for
that, nor is their presence even beneficial toward real spiritual growth
(whatever that might
be).
Rather, it is simply up to each one
of us to use our own independ- ence and intelligence to make the world a better
place, and to make ourselves better
people, with or without taking up medita- tion on top of that.
Monica Pignotti
(1989) then opined, after spending half a
dec- ade in Scientology:
I know that no one is going to give
me the answers to life. I now realize that I have a mind that is fully capable
of guid- ing me through the decisions I make in life and I will never put
anyone or anything above what I know and feel. I now know the techniques that
are [allegedly] used to control peo- ple’s minds and that people exist in this
world that have no compunction about using these techniques to manipulate
people.... My life and my mind are now my own and I will never give them up
again.
Those are very
hard lessons to learn for any man or woman who, too trustingly, wants to
believe in the “myth of the totally enlightened guru.” But anyone who simply
keeps questioning what he or she has
been told by the authorities on any spiritual path will eventually come to exactly
the same conclusions and resolve. It is inevitable, for the long-extant
reported information can lead to no other end.
So let each of
us then go our own way, following our hearts, utilizing unbiased,
multi-perspectival reason to the best of our abilities, and courageously
speaking truth as best we can, regard- less of whether or not that fits into
“the world according to” any “enlightened” sage’s authoritarian view of
reality.
That may not be
a flawless way of proceeding but, after all that
we have seen herein, it couldn’t get much worse.
So let’s do what
we can to make it better.
ESSENTIAL ONLINE RESOURCES
OVERALL
If you value your mental and
physical health, please don’t even consider joining any nontraditional
religion, with or without a guru-figure at its helm, without having first
researched it through these websites:
Freedom of Mind Center
(Steven Hassan, author
of Combatting Cult Mind Control and
Releasing the
Bonds) — www.freedomofmind.com
The Ross Institute — www.rickross.com
Cult News — www.cultnews.com GuruRatings Yahoo! Group —
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GuruRatings
Sarlo’s Guru Rating Service — www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/Map.htm (some of Sarlo’s
higher ratings should absolutely be downgraded on the basis of the
information presented throughout this book)
reFOCUS — www.refocus.org
453
International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), Cultic Studies
Review — www.csj.org
Ex-Cult Resource
Center — www.ex-cult.org
Cult Information Centre (UK) — www.cultinformation.org.uk Yahoo! Groups — www.groups.yahoo.com
MSN Groups
— http://groups.msn.com
Flameout — www.flameout.org/flameout/gurus/index.html
BEWARE
the Cult Awareness Network —
www.cultawarenessnetwork.org (this is now a “Scientology-
related” entity)
INFORMATION ON SPECIFIC SPIRITUAL
LEADERS AND ORGANIZATIONS
Adi
Da — http://lightmind.com/library/daismfiles,
www.adidaarchives.org
Andrew Cohen — http://whatenlightenment.blogspot.com
http://what-enlightenment-uncensored.blogspot.com
http://jekyllhyde.homepage.dk/home.html
Buddhism — http://www.american-buddha.com/CULTS.htm
Chinmoy — www.chinmoycult.com
Kriyananda, Ananda Church of Self-Realization — www.anandainfo.com www.anandauncovered.com
Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati — www.kashiashram.com
Maharaji, Divine Light Mission — http://ex-premie.org
http://www.prem-rawat-maharaji.info
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi — http://onwww.net/trancenet.org www.suggestibility.org www.angelfire.com/cantina/donandmarcy/TM.html
ESSENTIAL ONLINE RESOURCES 455
Muktananda, SYDA — www.leavingsiddhayoga.net
Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship —
www.yogananda-dif.org
Cult Busters—SRF Division: http://p208.ezboard.com/bcultbusterssrfdivision
SRF Walrus: www.angelfire.com/blues/srfwalrus
Kriya Yoga Discussion Board:
www.boards2go.com/boards/board.cgi?&user=Kriya
Satchidananda — http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/albania/148
Sai Baba — www.exbaba.com
www.snowcrest.net/sunrise
http://www.npi-news.dk/page152.htm
http://home.no.net/anir/Sai/enigma/index.htm
http://bdsteel.tripod.com/More/index.html
Scientology — www.xenu.net www.factnet.org
http://home.snafu.de/tilman www.lisamcpherson.org
http://lisatrust.bogie.nl/home.htm
Zen — www.darkzen.com
For archives of sites which move or disappear: The Internet
Archive Wayback Machine (http://web.archive.org/collections/web.html).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
With many of these
books being out of print,
I have found the used book
emporium at www.abebooks.com to be
invaluable for my own research.
Aarons, Mark and John Loftus
(1998 [1991]), Unholy Trinity:
The Vatican, The Nazis, and the Swiss Banks
(New York: St. Martin’s
Griffin).
Actualism (2006), “Selected Correspondence Peter: Jane Goodall” (http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/actualism/peter/selected-
correspondence/corr-goodall.htm).
Adriel, Jean (1947),
Avatar: The Life Story of Avatar
Meher Baba
(Berkeley, CA: John F. Kennedy University Press).
Agence France-Presse (1999), “Australian Teenager Sent Threat via Charles Manson,” March 22 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/manson/manson13.html).
Alexander, Meredith
(2001), “Thirty Years
Later, Stanford Prison Experiment Lives On,” in Stanford Report, August 22 (http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/august22/
prison2-822.html).
457
Allegro, John M.
(1970), The Sacred Mushroom and the
Cross: Fertility Cults and the Origins
of Judaism and Christianity (New York: Doubleday & Co.).
Allen, Charlotte (2001),
“The Scholars and the Goddess,” in Atlantic Monthly, January
(http://www.rickross.com/reference/wicca/wicca31.html).
Allen, John L., Jr. (2004), All the Pope’s Men: The Inside
Story of How the Vatican
Really Thinks (New York: Doubleday).
Alter, Rabbi (2004),
“Ask Rabbi Alter” (http://web.archive.org/web/
20040216042603/http://www.jewmich.com/askthe.htm).
Ammachi (2004),
“Amma” (http://www.ammachi.org/amma/index.html).
Amritanandamayi, Mata (1994),
For My Children (San
Ramon, CA: Mata Amritanandamayi Center).
Anandamoy, Brother
(1995), Spiritual Marriage (Los
Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship).
Anandamoy, Brother (1982),
Is Peace Possible in Today’s World?
(Los Angeles:
Self-Realization Fellowship).
Anandamoy, Brother (1979),
Closing the Generation Gap
(Los Angeles:
Self-Realization Fellowship).
Ananthanarayanan, N. (1970),
The Inspiring Life-Story of Swami
Sivananda (New Delhi: Indraprastha Press).
Anthony, Dick, Bruce
Ecker and Ken Wilber (1987),
Spiritual Choices: The Problem of Recognizing Authentic Paths to Inner Transformation (New York: Paragon
House).
Areddy, James T.
(1989), “Sri Chinmoy Seeks to Claim a Title: Stunt Man Supreme,” in The Wall Street Journal, January 13 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/srichinmoy/srichinmoy9.html).
Arendt, Hannah
(1992 [1963]), Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report
on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Books).
Arya, Rohit (2004),
“Paramahansa Yogananda—Reports from the
Inside of Indian Spirituality” (http://www.indiayogi.com/content/indsaints/yogananda.asp).
Askenasy, Hans (1978), Are We All Nazis? (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle
Stuart Inc.).
Associated Press (2003), “Celebrities Push for Transcendental Meditation Center in L.A.” (http://www.rickross.com/reference/tm/tm59.html).
Associated Press (1991), “Swami’s Former Followers Say He Demanded Sexual Favors,”
August 2 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/yogaville/yogaville9.html).
Atack, Jon (1992),
“The Total Freedom Trap: Scientology, Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard” (http://www.factnet.org/Books/ TotalFreedomTrap/TFTrap.html?FACTNet).
Atack, Jon (1990),
A
Piece of Blue Sky: Scientology, Dianetics and
L. Ron Hubbard Exposed
(New York: Carol Publishing Group; text available online
at http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/apobs/).
Aurobindo, Sri (1953),
Sri Aurobindo on Himself
and on the Mother
(Pondicherry, India:
Sri Aurobindo Ashram).
Austin, Bill (1999),
“Rev. Thomas Alhburn, Writer of Endorsements, Finally Meets Da” (http://lightmind.com/thevoid/daism/alhburn-leela.html).
Baba, Meher
(1967), Discourses (San Francisco, CA: Sufism Reoriented).
Baba, Upasani
(1978), The Talks of Sadguru Upasani-Baba
Maharaja, Volume 2, Part B (Sakori, India:
Upasani Kanyakumari Sthan).
Bailey, David
and Faye Bailey
(2003), “The Findings” (http://web.archive.org/web/20031214164954/http://
www.npi-news.dk/page152.htm).
Barry, Dave (1992),
Dave Barry Does Japan (New York: Random
House).
Bart, Peter (1998), “Defenders of the Faith Should Stand at Ease,” in Daily Variety, June 27 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/ scientology/celebrities/celebrities1.html).
BBC (2003), “The Conquest” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/ sceptred_isle/page/8.shtml?question=8).
Behar, Richard (1991),
“The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power,”
in Time, May 6 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/scien413.html).
Belfrage, Sally
(1981), Flowers of Emptiness: Reflections on an Ashram (New York: The Dial Press).
Bellamy, Dodie (1995), “Eckankar: A Former Member Revisits the Movement,” in San Diego Reader, June 22 (http://www.geocities.com/eckcult/dodie.html).
Berry, Jason (1992),
Lead Us Not into Temptation: Catholic
Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children (New York: Doubleday).
Berry, Jason and
Gerald Renner (2004), Vows of Silence:
The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II (New
York: Simon & Schuster).
Berzin, Alex, tr. and ed. (1978),
The Mahamudra (Library of Tibetan Works and Archives).
Beyerstein, Dale (1994),
Sai Baba’s Miracles: An Overview
(http://www.exbaba.de/files/A_Critical_Study.html).
Bhajan, Yogi (1977),
The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan: The Power of the Spoken Word (Pomona, CA:
Arcline Publications).
Bharati, Agehananda (1980),
The Ochre Robe: An Autobiography
(Santa Barbara,
CA: Ross-Erikson).
Bharati, Agehananda (1976),
The Light at the Center (Santa Barbara, CA: Ross-Erikson).
Bharati, Agehananda (1974),
“Fictitious Tibet: The Origin and Persistence of Rampaism,” in Tibet
Society Bulletin, Volume 7 (http://www.serendipity.li/baba/rampa.html).
Blacker, Hal (2001), “Enlightenment’s Divine Jester Mr. Lee
Lozowick,” in What Is Enlightenment? Issue
20 (http://www.wie.org/j20/lee.asp).
Blacker, Hal (1996), “The Kramer Papers:
A Look Behind the Mask of Antiauthoritarianism,” in What Is Enlightenment? Issue 9 (http://www.wie.org/j9/kramer.asp).
Blackmore, Susan (1986),
The Adventures of a Parapsychologist
(Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books).
Blackmore, Susan (1983), “Are Out-of-Body Experiences Evidence for Survival?” in Anabiosis—The Journal for Near-Death
Studies, Volume 3 (http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Articles/ Anabiosis%201983.htm).
Blanco, Jodee (2000),
The Complete Guide to Book Publicity
(New York: Allworth Press).
Blass, Thomas (2004), The Man Who Shocked
the World: The Life
and Legacy of Stanley Milgram (New York: Basic Books).
Blavatsky, Helena
P., edited by Elizabeth Preston
and Christmas Humphreys
(1967), An Abridgement of The Secret
Doctrine (Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing House).
Blofeld, John (1970),
The Tantric Mysticism of Tibet: A Practical
Guide (New York: E. P. Dutton).
Bob, Sri (2000),
The Knee of Daism:
Deconstructing Adi Da
(http://lightmind.com/Impermanence/Library/knee/).
Boehm, Deborah Boliver (1996), A
Zen Romance: One Woman’s Adventures in a Monastery (New
York: Kodansha International).
Bohm, David and Basil J. Hiley (1993),
The Undivided Universe
(New York:
Routledge).
Bonder, Saniel (2003),
“Waking Down in Mutuality”
(http://www.wakingdown.org).
Bonder, Saniel (1990),
The Divine Emergence of the World-Teacher
(Clearlake, CA: The
Dawn Horse Press).
Bose, Nirmal Kumar (1974),
My Days with Gandhi
(New Delhi: Orient Longman
Limited).
Bostock, Cliff (1998),
“Guru with a Schtick: An Interview with Ma
Jaya,” in Creative Loafing, April 18 (http://web.archive.org/web/20040309150200/http://
www.soulworks.net/writings/paradigms/site_027.html).
Boston Globe, Investigative Staff of the (2003), Betrayal: The Crisis
in the Catholic Church (New York: Little, Brown & Company).
Braun, Kirk (1984), Rajneeshpuram: The Unwelcome Society—
“Cultures Collide in a Quest for Utopia”
(Medford, OR: Scout Creek
Press).
Brennan, Barbara
Ann (1993), Light Emerging: The Journey of Personal Healing (Toronto: Bantam
Books).
Brennan, Barbara
Ann (1987), Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing
Through the Human Energy Field (Toronto: Bantam Books).
Brent, Peter (1972),
Godmen of India (London: Allen Lane).
Brewer, Mark (1975), “‘We’re
Gonna Tear You Down and Put You Back Together,’” in Psychology Today, August (http://www.rickross.com/reference/est/estpt8.html).
Brooke, Tal (1999 [1990]), Avatar of Night: Special
Millennial Edition (Berkeley, CA: End Run Publishing).
Brown, Mick (2000), “Divine
Downfall,” in The Daily
Telegraph Saturday Magazine, October 27 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/saibaba/saibaba3.html).
Browning,
Christopher R. (1998 [1992]), Ordinary
Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution
in Poland (New
York: HarperPerennial).
Bruni, Frank and Elinor Burkett (2002 [1993]), A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse and the
Catholic Church (New York: Perennial).
Brunton, Paul (1935), A Search
in Secret India (New York:
E. P. Dutton & Co.,
Inc.).
Bugliosi, Vincent and Curt Gentry (1975), Helter Skelter:
The True Story of the Manson
Murders (New York: Bantam Books).
Burke, Abbot George (1994), An Eagle’s
Flight: Autobiography of a
Gnostic Orthodox Christian (Geneva, NE: Saint George Press).
Burroughs,
William S. (1995 [1972]), Ali’s
Smile/Naked Scientology (Bonn, Germany:
Expanded Media Editions).
Burroughs, William S. (1974), The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs by Daniel Odier (New
York: Penguin Books).
Buswell, Robert E. (1992), The Zen Monastic Experience: Buddhist Practice in Contemporary Korea (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press).
Butler, Katy (1990), “The Shadow of Buddhist America,”
in
Common Boundary, May-June.
Butler, Katy (1985a), “Sex Practices Did Not Cease, Marin Cult Officials Admit,” in San Francisco Chronicle, April 9 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/adida/adida9.html).
Butler, Katy (1985), “Guru’s
Fiji Haven Called
‘Paradise,’” in San
Francisco Chronicle, April 5 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/adida/adida11.html).
Butterfield, Stephen
T. (1994), The Double
Mirror: A Skeptical Journey into Buddhist Tantra (Berkeley,
CA: North Atlantic Books).
Caddy, Eileen
(1976), Foundations of Findhorn
(Forres, Scotland: Findhorn
Publications).
Campbell, June (1996), Traveller in Space: In Search of Female
Identity in Tibetan Buddhism (New York: George Braziller).
CANDER
(2001), “Latest News” (http://web.archive.org/web/20031201170313/http://
www.savemtwashington.org/).
Caplan, Mariana (2002),
Do You Need a Guru? (London: Thorsons).
Caplan, Mariana (2001),
Halfway Up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment (Prescott, AZ: Hohm Press).
Carlson, Peter (2002a), “Chakra
Full of Scandal: Baring the Yogis,”
in Washington Post, August 27 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article
&node=&contentId=A64895-2002Aug26¬Found=true).
Carlson, Peter (2002), “Taking
a Yogic Flier on ‘Peace Bonds,’” in Washington
Post, August 29 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/tm/tm37.html).
Carnahan, Sumner (1995), In the Presence of My Enemies
(Santa Fe, NM: Heartsfire Books).
Carroll, Robert T. (2004e), “Jean
Houston and The Mystery
School,” in The Skeptic’s Dictionary (http://www.skepdic.com/houston.html).
Carroll, Robert T. (2004d), “Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner (1861
– 1925), and Waldorf Schools,” in The
Skeptic’s Dictionary (http://www.skepdic.com/steiner.html).
Carroll, Robert T. (2004c), “Firewalking,” in The Skeptic’s
Dictionary (http://www.skepdic.com/firewalk.html).
Carroll, Robert
T. (2004b), “Incorruptible Bodies,” in The Skeptic’s Dictionary (http://www.skepdic.com/incorrupt.html).
Carroll, Robert T. (2004a), “Cold
Reading,” in The Skeptic’s Dictionary (http://www.skepdic.com/coldread.html).
Carroll, Robert
T. (2004), “Alien
Abduction,” in The Skeptic’s Dictionary (http://www.skepdic.com/aliens.html).
Carroll, Robert T. (2003), “The Skeptic’s Dictionary Newsletter 38” (http://www.skepdic.com/news/newsletter38.html).
Castro, Stephen
J. (1996), Hypocrisy and Dissent Within the
Findhorn Foundation: Towards a Sociology of a New Age Community (Forres,
Scotland: New Media Books).
Chadwick, David (1999),
Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teachings of Shunryu Suzuki (New
York: Broadway Books).
Chadwick, David (1994), Thank You and OK! An American
Zen Failure in Japan (New York: Penguin/Arkana).
Charlton, Hilda (1990), Hell-Bent for Heaven: The Autobiography
of Hilda Charlton (Woodstock, NY: Golden Quest).
Chatterjee, Aroup (2003), Mother Teresa:
The Final Verdict (Kolkata: Meteor Books; text
available online at http://www.meteorbooks.com).
Chelishev, E. (1987), “Swami Vivekananda—The Great Indian Humanist, Democrat
and Patriot,” in Harish C. Gupta, ed. (1987),
Swami Vivekananda Studies in Soviet Union
(Calcutta: Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture).
Chew, Sally (1998),
“Paradise Lost,” in Out Magazine, December/ January (http://leavingsiddhayoga.net/homophobia_in_sy.htm).
Chinmoy, Sri (1985), The Master
and the Disciple (Jamaica, NY: Agni Press).
Chinmoy, Sri (1978),
Meditation: Man-Perfection in
God-Satisfaction (Jamaica, NY: Aum Publications).
Chopra, Deepak
(2000), How to Know God: The Soul’s Journey
into the Mystery of Mysteries (New York: Harmony Books).
Chopra, Sonia (1999),
“Satchidananda’s Yoga Ashram Caught Up in a New Controversy, Past Sexual Charges
Begin Resurfacing,” in Rediff
on the Net, June (http://www.rickross.com/reference/yogaville/yogaville21.html).
Christopher, Milbourne (1975),
Mediums, Mystics, & the Occult
(New York:
Thomas Y. Crowell Co.).
Christopher, Milbourne
(1970), ESP, Seers & Psychics (New
York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co.).
Churchill, Pola (1996), Shiva Mahavatar Babaji (Beverly Hills, CA: Churchill Publishing Co.).
Cialdini, Robert
B. (2001), Influence: Science
and Practice (Toronto: Allyn and Bacon).
Clark, Tom (1980), The Great Naropa Poetry Wars (Santa Barbara, CA: Cadmus Editions).
Clayson, Alan (1996 [1990]),
The Quiet One: A Life of George
Harrison (London: Sanctuary Publishing Limited).
Cloud, David W. (2000), “Elvis Presley: The King of Rock &
Roll” (http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/elvispresley.htm).
Cohen, Andrew (2005), “Endorsements for What Is Enlightenment? Magazine”
(http://www.andrewcohen.org/pressroom/ WhatIsEnlightenmentquotes.asp).
Cohen, Andrew (2002),
Living Enlightenment (Lenox, MA: Moksha
Foundation).
Cohen, Andrew (2001a), “From What Is to What Ought to Be,” in What
Is Enlightenment? Issue 19 (http://www.wie.org/j19/lerner.asp).
Cohen, Andrew
(2001), “Don’t Ask Why—Just Do Something,” in What
Is Enlightenment? Issue 19 (http://www.wie.org/j19/majaya.asp).
Cohen, Andrew
(2000a), “Yoga, Ego and Purification,” in What Is
Enlightenment? Issue 17 (http://www.wie.org/j17/desai.asp?page=1).
Cohen, Andrew (2000),
Embracing Heaven & Earth
(Lenox, MA: Moksha
Foundation).
Cohen, Andrew
(1999a), “‘I CAN’ vs. ‘I AM’: What is the Relationship Between Self-Mastery and Enlightenment?” in What Is Enlightenment? Issue 15
(http://www.wie.org/j15/andrew.asp).
Cohen, Andrew (1999), In Defense
of the Guru Principle (Lenox, MA: Moksha Foundation).
Cohen, Andrew
(1992), Autobiography of an Awakening (Corte Madera, CA: Moksha Foundation).
Cohen, Andrew (1989),
My Master is My Self (Larkspur, CA: Moksha Foundation).
Cohen, Susan
(2002a), “Swami Satchidananda, Integral Yoga Institute, Yogaville—A Survivor’s
Story,” August 31 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/yogaville/yogaville61.html).
Colin, Molly,
Peter Seidman and Tony Lewis
(1985), “Defectors Voice
Several Charges,” in Mill Valley Record, April
3 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/adida/adida19.html).
Colman, E. A. M. (1974),
The Dramatic Use of Bawdy in Shakespeare (London: Longman Group
Limited).
Conway, Flo and Jim Siegelman (1982),
“Information Disease: Have
Cults Created a New Mental Illness?” in Science
Digest,
January (excerpt at http://www.amazing.com/scientology/ cos-mind-control.html?FACTNet).
Cooper, Paulette (1997), “Harassment Diary” (http://www.lermanet.com/cos/cooperdiary.htm?FACTNet).
Cooper, Paulette
(1971), The Scandal of Scientology (New
York: Tower Publications, Inc.; full text available online at http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/tsos/sos.html).
Cooperman, Alan (2005), “Harassment Claims Roil Habitat
for Humanity” (http://www.newsobserver.com/nation_world/ story/2194735p-8576011c.html).
Cope, Stephen (2000),
Yoga and the Quest for the True Self
(New York: Bantam Books).
Cornell, Judith (2001),
Amma: Healing the Heart
of the World
(New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc.).
Cornwell, John (1999),
Hitler’s Pope: The Secret
History of Pius XII
(New York: Viking).
Corydon, Bent and L.
Ron Hubbard, Jr. (1998 [1987]), L. Ron
Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart
Inc.; full text online at http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/mom/ Messiah_or_Madman.txt).
Da, Adi (1995), The Knee of Listening: The Early-Life Ordeal
and the Radical Spiritual Realization of the Divine World-Teacher (Middletown,
CA: The Dawn Horse Press).
Dakota (1998), “Paramahansa Yogananda: A Different
Light” (http://www.yogananda-dif.org).
Dalal, A. S., ed. (2000), A
Greater Psychology: An Introduction to the Psychological Thought
of Sri Aurobindo (Los Angeles:
Jeremy P. Tarcher).
Daniélou, Alain (1987), The Way to the Labyrinth: Memories
of East and West (New York: New Directions).
Das, Bhagavan
(1997), It’s Here Now (Are You?) (New York: Broadway Books).
Das, Sushi
(2003), “Hardly Krishna,” in The Age (Australia), June 2
(http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/02/ 1054406108753.html).
Dass, Ram (2000), Still Here:
Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying (New York: Riverhead Books).
Dass, Ram (1990),
Journey of Awakening: A Meditator’s Guidebook
(New York: Bantam).
Dass, Ram (1979), Miracle of Love: Stories
About Neem Karoli Baba (New York: E. P. Dutton).
Dass, Ram (1971),
Be Here Now (San
Cristobal, NM: Lama Foundation).
Dass, Ram and Stephen
Levine (1977), Grist for the Mill (Santa
Cruz, CA: Unity Press).
Davis, Roy Eugene (2000), Seven Lessons
in Conscious Living
(Lakemont, GA: CSA Press).
DeRopp, Robert S. (1968),
The Master Game: Pathways
to Higher Consciousness
Beyond the Drug Experience (New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc.).
Desai, Yogi Amrit (1985), Working Miracles
of Love (Lenox, MA: Kripalu Publications).
Desai, Yogi Amrit (1981), Kripalu Yoga: Meditation-in-Motion
(Lenox, MA: Kripalu Publications).
Dhargyey, Geshe Ngawang (1974),
Tibetan Tradition of Mental Development (Library of
Tibetan Works and Archives).
Disciples, Eastern
& Western (1979),
The Life of Swami Vivekananda (Mayavati: Advaita
Ashrama).
Dittmann, Melissa
(2003), “Lessons from Jonestown,” in APA Monitor, Volume 34, No. 10, November
(http://www.apa.org/monitor/nov03/jonestown.html).
Downing, Michael
(2001), Shoes Outside the Door: Desire,
Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center (Washington, DC: Counterpoint).
Doyle, Thomas P. (2003), “Roman Catholic Clericalism, Religious
Duress, and Clergy Sexual Abuse,”
in Pastoral Psychology, Volume 51, No. 3, January.
Doyle, Thomas P. (2002), “They Still Don’t Get It and Probably Never Will,” in Irish Times, March 22.
Dreyer, Peter (1975), A Gardener
Touched with Genius (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan,
Inc.).
Dutt, Anuradha
(1988), “The Troubled Guru,” in The
Illustrated Weekly of India,
July 17 (http://www.trancenet.org/news/weekly/).
Dykema, Ravi (2003),
“An Interview with Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche,” in Nexus (http://www.nexuspub.com/articles/2003/may2003/interview.htm).
Dynes, Michael
and Dominic Kennedy
(2001), “I Sought
Peace and Couldn’t Find It,”
in The Times British News, August 27 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/saibaba/saibaba9.html).
Ebon, Martin (1968),
Maharishi, the Guru: An International
Symposium (Toronto: The New American
Library of Canada Limited).
Economist (2000), “Monkey Business: Thailand’s Monkish
Scandals,” in The Economist, November
30 (http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=
S%26(X%20%2BQQ%3F*%0A).
Edwards, Harry
(1995), “Incorruptibility: Miracle
or Myth?” in Investigator,
45, November (http://www.adam.com.au/bstett/PaIncorruptibility.htm).
Edwards, Harry (1994), “Firewalking,” in Skeptoon, An Illustrated Look at Some New Age Beliefs (New
South Wales, Australia: Harry Edwards Publications; http://www.indian-skeptic.org/html/
byhedwa3.htm).
Ehrlich, Richard S. (2000), “Buddhist Crimes” (http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0011/S00003.htm).
Eisenstadt, Merry M. (1993), “Former
Cult Members Recall
Group They Left,” in Washington
Jewish Week, March 25.
Elias (2002), “Yogic
Masturbation in Adidam” (http://lightmind.com/blogs/blogarchive-007.html).
Elias (2000a), “The
New Pattern” (http://lightmind.com/thevoid/daismreport-04.html).
Elias (2000), “Adidam
Fundraising” (http://lightmind.com/thevoid/daismreport-03.html).
Elias (1999a), “Is Daism Vulnerable to a Class Action Suit?” (http://lightmind.com/blogs/blogarchive-036.html).
Elias (1999), “For a Man Who Had a Vision of Frank”
(http://lightmind.com/blogs/blogarchive-016.html).
Eller, Cynthia (2003),
The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won’t Give Women a Future
(Boston, MA: Beacon Press).
Ellis, Mark (2003),
“Dalai Lama: I’ve Missed Sex,” in The
Mirror, July 29 (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=13231174
_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-DALAI-LAMA--I-VE-
MISSED-SEX-name_page.html).
EmpireNet (2003), “Lawsuits Against
TWI and Allegations of Sexual Misconduct” (http://www.empirenet.com/~messiah7/tw_suits-sex.htm).
England, Mark and Darlene
McCormick (1993), “The Sinful
Messiah,” in The Waco Tribune-Herald Series, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 3 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/waco/waco9.html).
Epstein, Edward (1995),
“Politics and Transcendental Meditation,” in San Francisco
Chronicle, December 29 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/tm/tm3.html).
Evans, Christopher (1973),
Cults of Unreason (London: Harrap).
Extra
(1999), “Extra: Family at War,”
September 27 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/yogaville/yogaville27.html).
Falk, Geoffrey (2008 [2006]), “Norman
Einstein”: The Dis- Integration of Ken Wilber (Toronto: Million Monkeys Press).
Falsani, Cathleen
(2002), “All He’s Saying Is...,”
in Chicago Sun-Times, July 11 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/tm/tm34.html).
Farrow, Mia (1997), What Falls Away: A Memoir (New
York: Nan A. Talese).
Feuerstein,
Georg (1998), The Mystery of Light: The
Life and Teaching of Omraam
Mikhael Aivanhov (Lower Lake, CA: Integral Publishing).
Feuerstein, Georg (1996), “Holy Madness: The Dangerous and Disillusioning Example of Da Free
John,” in What Is Enlightenment? Issue
9 (http://www.wie.org/j9/feuerstein_madness.asp?page=2).
Feuerstein, Georg (1992),
Holy Madness (New York:
Arkana).
Fields, Rick (1992), How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative
History of Buddhism in America (Boston, MA: Shambhala).
Findhorn Community (1980), Faces of Findhorn (New
York: Harper & Row, Publishers).
Fitzgerald, Frances (1986), Cities on a
Hill: A Journey Through Contemporary American Cultures
(New York: Simon & Schuster).
Flaccus, Gillian (2001),
“Ore. Town Never Recovered from Scare,”
in The Associated Press, October 19 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/rajneesh/rajneesh8.html).
Forem, Jack (1973), Transcendental Meditation; Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the Science of Creative Intelligence (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited).
France, David (2004), Our Fathers:
The Secret Life of the Catholic
Church in an Age of Scandal (New York: Broadway Books).
Frank, Arno (2000), “Intimidation of the Waldorf
Kind,” in TAZ,
August 4 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/waldorf/waldorf2.html).
Franken, Al (1996),
Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot (New
York: Delacorte Press).
Franklin, Satya Bharti
(1992), The Promise of Paradise: A Woman’s Intimate Story of the Perils
of Life with Rajneesh (Barrytown,
NY: Station Hill Press).
French, Patrick
(2003), Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History
of a Lost Land (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).
Friedman, Roger (2003),
“Will Scientology Celebs Sign ‘Spiritual’ Contract?” on Fox News, September 3
(http://www.rickross.com/ reference/scientology/celebrities/celebrities32.html).
Furlong, Monica (1987),
Thérèse of Lisieux (London: Virago Press).
Futrelle,
David (1997), “How Strange Were They? The San Diego Cultists Have More in Common with Other Religious Enthusiasts Than You Might Think,” in Salon, March 28 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/heavensgate/gate30.html).
Galloway,
Paul (1991), “Gonzo Guru,” in Chicago
Tribune, September 20 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/srichinmoy/srichinmoy1.html).
Garden, Mary (1988), The Serpent
Rising: A Journey
of Spiritual Seduction (Fortitude
Valley, Australia: Brolga Publishing).
Gardner, Martin
(2000), Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?
Discourses on Reflexology, Numerology, Urine Therapy, and Other
Dubious Subjects (New York: W. W. Norton & Company).
Gardner, Martin (1999), “Carlos Castaneda and New Age
Anthropology,” in Skeptical Inquirer,
Volume 23, No. 5, September/ October.
Gardner, Martin (1996), Weird Water and Fuzzy Logic (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books).
Gardner, Martin (1978),
“White and Brown Music, Fractal
Curves and One-Over-f Fluctuations,” in Scientific American, April.
Gardner, Martin (1957
[1952]), Fads and Fallacies in the Name of
Science (New York: Dover Publications).
Geisler, Norman (1991),
“The Rise of the Cults,”
lecture at The New England Institute for Religious
Research, November 2.
Ghosh, Sananda
Lal (1980), Mejda: The Family and the Early Life
of Paramahansa Yogananda (Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship).
Ginsberg, Alex (2004), “Ex-Followers Rip ‘Sleazy’ Sri,”
in New York Post, May 23 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/srichinmoy/srichinmoy28.html).
Giri, Swami Satyeswarananda (1992), Babaji, Volume III: Masters
of Original Kriya (San Diego: The Sanskrit Classics).
Giri, Swami Satyeswarananda (1991b), Kriya: Finding the True
Path (San Diego: The Sanskrit Classics).
Giri, Swami
Satyeswarananda (1991), Babaji, Volume
II: Lahiri Mahasay, The Polestar
of Kriya (San
Diego: The Sanskrit
Classics).
Giuliano, Geoffrey
(1989), Dark Horse: The Secret Life of George Harrison (Toronto: Stoddart
Publishing Co. Limited).
Giuliano, Geoffrey
(1986), The Beatles: A Celebration (Agincourt, Ontario: Methuen
Publications).
Goa, Helen (1999), “Sex and the Singular Swami,”
in The San Francisco Weekly, March
10 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/ananda/ananda1.html).
Goffman, Erving (1961), Asylums: Essays
on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Garden
City, NY: Anchor Books).
Goldberg, Michelle (2001), “Untouchable?” in Salon, July 25 (http://dir.salon.com/people/feature/2001/07/25/baba/index.html).
Goldhammer, John D. (1996), Under the Influence: The Destructive
Effects of Group Dynamics (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books).
Goldman, Albert (1991), Elvis: The Last 24 Hours (New
York: St. Martin’s Paperbacks).
Goldman, Albert (1981),
Elvis (New York: Avon).
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2004 [1994]), The
Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influences on Nazi Ideology (New York: New York
University Press).
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2003
[2001]), Black Sun: Aryan Cults,
Esoteric Nazism and the Politics
of Identity (New
York: New York University Press).
Goodstein, Laurie (1998),
“Hare Krishna Faith Details Past Abuse
at Boarding Schools,” in the New York
Times, October 9 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/krishna/krishna5.html).
Gordon, James (1987),
The Golden Guru: The Strange Journey
of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Lexington, MA: The Stephen Greene Press).
Gorski, Timothy N.
(2001), “Hearing on Swindlers, Hucksters and Snake Oil Salesmen: The Hype and
Hope of Marketing Anti-Aging Products to Seniors,” in United States Senate Special Committee
on Aging, September 10 (http://www.quackwatch.org/ 01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Hearing/gorski2.html).
Gould, Martin (1998),
“Travolta Dragged into Bizarre Gay Lawsuit,” in the Star, August 18 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/Scien58.html).
Gourley, Scott R. and Rosemary
Edmiston (1997), “Adidam
Comes to the Northcoast,” in Northcoast
Journal Weekly (http://www.rickross.com/reference/adida/adida4.html).
Govindan, Marshall (1997),
How I Became a Disciple of
Babaji
(Eastman, Quebec:
Babaji’s Kriya Yoga and Publications, Inc.).
Gracious, God Is (2000),
“Barbara Marx-Hubbard Meets
Adi Da” (http://lightmind.com/thevoid/daism/hubbard-leela.html).
Grout, James (2003), “The Death of William the Conqueror” (http://itsa.ucsf.edu/~snlrc/britannia/hastings/williamdeath.html).
GuruNet (2003), “Sri Aurobindo: Overview of His Life”
(http://gurusoftware.com/Gurunet/AurobindoMother/
Aurobindo.htm).
Gyan, Satish Chandra
(1980), Sivananda and His Ashram
(Madras, India: The Christian Literature Society).
Gyanamata, S. (1984),
God Alone: The Life and Letters
of a Saint
(Los Angeles:
Self-Realization Fellowship).
Hajdu, David (2003),
“Hustling Elvis,” in The New York Review of Books (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16598).
Hall, Elizabeth (1975), “The Sufi Tradition: ‘Some Gurus are
Frankly Phonies, and They Don’t Try to Hide It from Me, They
Think I am One Too,’” in Psychology
Today, July.
Hamilton, Craig (1999),
“Excellence is Not Enough: An Interview
with Anthony Robbins,” in What Is
Enlightenment? Issue 15 (http://www.wie.org/j15/robbins.asp).
Hamilton,
Rosemary (1998), Hellbent for
Enlightenment: Unmasking Sex, Power,
and Death with a Notorious Master (Ashland, OR: White Cloud Press).
Haney, Craig and Philip G. Zimbardo (1998),
“The Past and Future
of U.S. Prison Policy: Twenty-Five Years After the Stanford Prison Experiment,” in American
Psychologist, 53 (text
available online at http://www.prisonexp.org/pdf/ap1998.pdf).
Haney, Craig and Philip G. Zimbardo (1975), “The Blackboard
Penitentiary: It’s Tough to Tell a High School from a Prison,”
in Psychology Today, June.
Haney, Craig,
William Curtis Banks and Philip G. Zimbardo (1973), “Interpersonal Dynamics in
a Simulated Prison,” in International
Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1 (text available online
at http://www.prisonexp.org/pdf/ijcp1973.pdf).
Harper, Marvin Henry (1972), Gurus, Swamis,
& Avatars
(Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press).
Harpur, Tom (2001), “Guru Shrugs Off Sex Allegations,” in The Star, January 14 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/saibaba/saibaba5.html).
Harris, Lis (1994), “O Guru,
Guru, Guru,” in the New Yorker,
November 14
(http://www.ex-cult.org/Groups/SYDA-Yoga/leave.txt).
Harris, Michael
(1991 [1990]), Unholy Orders:
Tragedy at Mount Cashel (New York: Penguin
Books).
Harvey, Andrew (2000), The Return
of the Mother (Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd.).
Harvey, Bob (2000a), “The Man Believers
Think is God,” in The
Ottawa Citizen, December 19 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/saibaba/saibaba4.html).
Harvey, Peter (2000),
An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values
and Issues (Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press).
Hassan, Steven
(2000), Releasing the Bonds:
Empowering People to Think for Themselves (Somerville,
MA: Freedom of Mind Press).
Hassan, Steven (1990 [1988]), Combatting Cult Mind Control
(Rochester, VT: Park
Street Press).
Hatengdi, M. U. (1984), Nityananda: The Divine Presence
(Cambridge, MA: Rudra Press).
Hausherr,
Tilman (2002), “Cult Apologist FAQ” (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/faq-you/cult.apologists.txt).
Hawken, Paul (1976),
The Magic of Findhorn
(New York: Bantam Books).
Hayward, Jeremy and Francisco Varela (1992), Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama
on the Sciences of Mind (Boston, MA: Shambhala).
Heath, Chris (2000), “The Epic Life of Carlos Santana,” in Rolling Stone, March 16 (New York:
Straight Arrow; http://www.rickross.com/reference/srichinmoy/srichinmoy18.html).
Hislop, John (1978), Conversations with Sathya Sai Baba (San Diego, CA: Birth Day Publishing
Company).
Hitchens, Christopher (2001),
Letters to a Young Contrarian
(Cambridge, MA:
Basic Books).
Hitchens, Christopher (1998),
“His Material Highness,” in Salon,
July 13
(http://www.salon.com/news/1998/07/13news.html).
Hitchens, Christopher (1995), The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (New York: Verso).
Hoffer, Eric (1951), The True Believer (San
Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, Publishers).
Holmes, David S. (1988), “The Influence of Meditation Versus Rest
on Physiological Arousal: A Second Evaluation,” in Michael A. West, ed., The Psychology of Meditation (Oxford:
Clarendon Press) (http://www.american-buddha.com/meditation.arousal.htm).
Holmes, David S. (1984), “Meditation and Somatic Arousal Reduction. A Review of the Experimental Evidence,” in American
Psychologist, 39(1).
Hoo, Stephanie
(2005), “Many in Mongolia Nostalgic for Communism”
(http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/ 2005/05/21/many_in_mongolia_nostalgic_for_communism?mode=P F).
Horgan, John (2003a),
Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the
Border Between Science and Spirituality (New York: Houghton Mifflin
Company).
Horgan, John (2003),
“The Myth of the Totally
Enlightened Guru” (http://www.johnhorgan.org/work8.htm).
Horgan, John (1999),
“The Anti-Gurus” (http://www.johnhorgan.org/work5.htm).
Houston, Jean (2006),
“Bio” (www.jeanhouston.org/bio.html).
Houston, Jean (1982),
The Possible Human: A Course in Extending
Your Physical, Mental, and Creative Abilities (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher,
Inc.).
Hubner, John and Lindsey
Gruson (1990 [1988]),
Monkey on a Stick: Murder,
Madness, and the Hare Krishnas (New York: Penguin Books).
Huchzermeyer, Wilfried (1998),
Mother: A Short Biography
(Silver Lake,
WI: Lotus Press).
Inner Culture (1935), “Inner
Culture News,” in Inner Culture,
December
(http://www.ananda.it/en/yogananda/india1935/india9.html).
Integral
(2004), “History”
(http://web.archive.org/web/ 20031205084501/www.integralinstitute.org/history.htm).
Integral (2003), “Integral Institute” (http://www.integralinstitute.org).
IntegralNaked
(2005), “Michael Murphy” (http://www.integralnaked.org/talk.aspx?id=35).
IntegralNaked
(2004), “Who is Ken Wilber?” (http://www.integralnaked.org/contributor.aspx?id=1).
Jackson, Devon (1996),
“Bless You, Sir, May I Jog Another?” in Outside
magazine, October (http://outside.away.com/outside/magazine/1096/9610febl.html).
Jacobsen, Jeff (2004), “Lisa
McPherson” (http://www.lisamcpherson.org).
James, William (1990),
The Varieties of Religious
Experience (New York:
Vintage Books/Library of America).
Jenkins, Philip
(2001), Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and
New Religions in American
History (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
Jewel (1999), “How Devotees Became ‘Dissidents’ in 1985”
(http://lightmind.com/archives/daism-05/
daism-05.mv?module=view&viewid=3252&row=270).
John, Bubba Free (1974), Garbage and the Goddess:
The Last Miracles and Final Spiritual Instructions of Bubba
Free John (Lower Lake,
CA: The Dawn Horse Press).
John, Da Free (1985),
The Dawn Horse Testament (Middletown, CA: The Dawn Horse Press). Foreword at http://www.beezone.com/Wilber/ken_wilbur_praise.html.
John, Da Free (1980),
Scientific Proof of the Existence of God Will Soon Be Announced by the White House!
(Middletown, CA: The Dawn Horse Press). Foreword at http://www.beezone.com/Wilber/onherocults.html.
Johnson, K. Paul (1994),
The Masters Revealed: Madame
Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White Lodge (New York: State University of New York Press).
Joy, W. Brugh (1990), Avalanche: Heretical
Reflections on the Dark
and the Light (New York: Ballantine Books).
Kamala (1964), The Flawless Mirror
(Nevada City, CA: Crystal
Clarity Publishers).
Kashi (2004), “Kashi Center for Advanced
Spiritual Studies Presents
Bhagavan Das Chanting Concert and Workshop” (http://www.kashi.org/Flyers/BhagDas.pdf).
Kashi (2003), “Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati” (http://www.kashi.org/bio.htm).
Kasturi, N. (1971),
The Life of Bhagavan
Sri Sathya Sai Baba
(Santa Ana, CA: Sai Baba Society).
Katz, Donald (1992),
Home Fires (New York:
Harper Collins).
Kaufman, Robert (1995 [1972]), Inside Scientology/Dianetics: How I Joined Dianetics/Scientology and
Became Superhuman (http://www.factnet.org/Books/InsideScientology/?FACTNet).
Kaur, Now Aware (1998), “3HO—Is
It a Toxic Faith System?” (http://www.rickross.com/reference/3ho/3ho44.html).
Kazlev, Alan (2003), “Ken Wilber and Adi Da” (http://www.kheper.net/topics/Wilber/Da.html).
Keegan, Paul (2002), “Yogis
Behaving Badly,” in Business 2.0,
September
(http://www.rickross.com/reference/general/general478.html).
Keene, M. Lamar (1977),
The Psychic Mafia (New
York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc.).
Kennedy, Dominic (2001),
“Suicide, Sex and the Guru,”
in The Times British News, August 27 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/saibaba/saibaba11.html).
Kent, Stephen A. (2001), From Slogans
to Mantras: Social Protest
and Religious Conversion in the Late Vietnam
Era (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press).
Khalsa, Kamlapadi
Kaur (1994), “In the Magical Soup: Meditations
on Twenty Years of Cult Living (Within
Yogi Bhajan’s 3HO)” (http://www.rickross.com/reference/3ho/3ho19.html).
Khalsa, Kamlapati Kaur (1990), “The Dysfunctional 3HO Family,”
in Visions (http://www.rickross.com/reference/3ho/3ho72.html).
Khalsa, Shakti
Parwha Kaur (1996),
Kundalini Yoga: The Flow of
Eternal Power (New York: Perigee).
Kjernsmo, Kjetil (1997), “A Preliminary Empirical
Study of Firewalking”
(http://www.skepsis.no/english/subject/firewalk/kpreemp1).
Klein, Aaron E. and Cynthia
L. Klein (1979),
Mind Trips: The Story of Consciousness-Raising Movements
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company).
Klimo, Jon (1998),
Channeling: Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal
Sources (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books).
Knight, Steve (2004),
“Uri Geller: Chronological Bibliography” (http://www.zem.demon.co.uk/index.htm).
Koestler, Arthur (1960),
The Lotus and the Robot (New
York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.).
Kornfield, Jack (2000),
After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the
Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path (New York: Bantam).
Kornfield, Jack (1993),
A
Path with Heart:
A Guide Through the Perils
and Promises of a Spiritual Life (New York: Bantam).
Kramer, Joel and Diane Alstad (1993),
The Guru Papers: Masks of
Authoritarian Power (Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd.).
Krassner, Paul (1993), Confessions of a Raving,
Unconfined Nut: Misadventures
in the Counter-Culture (New York: Simon & Schuster).
Kraus, Daniel (2000), “Roo the Day,” in Salon, August 25 (http://dir.salon.com/people/feature/2000/08/25/roos/index.html).
Kripal, Jeffrey
(1995), Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in
the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press). For a critique of Kripal’s work, from a monk of the Ramakrishna Order,
see Tyagananda (2000). For Kripal’s response
to his critics, see http://www.atman.net/kalischild/index.html.
Kripalu (2003), “Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health” (http://www.kripalu.org).
Krishnamurti, Jiddu (1969), Early Writings,
Volume 1 (Bombay: Chetana).
Kriya Yoga Discussion
Board (2001), “Kriya Yoga Discussion
Board” (http://www.boards2go.com/boards/board.cgi?&user=Kriya).
Kriyananda, Swami
(1979), The Path: Autobiography of a Western Yogi (Nevada City, CA: Ananda
Publications).
Kriyananda,
Swami (1974 [1973]), The Road Ahead:
World Prophecies by the Great Master,
Paramahansa Yogananda, Edited with Commentary by his Disciple
Swami Kriyananda
(Nevada City, CA: Ananda Publications).
Kuncl, Tom (2001), “George
W. Bush and the Moonies,” in The National Examiner, January 9 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/unif106.html).
Lake County (1985), “Believers ‘Surrender’ to Spiritual Master,” in Lake County Record-Bee, April 4 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/adida/adida13.html).
Lalich, Janja (2004),
Bounded Choice: True Believers and
Charismatic Cults (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
Lalich, Janja (1997),
“CNN Interview with Yanya [sic] Lalich” (http://www.rickross.com/reference/heavensgate/gate25.html).
Lama, Dalai (1999),
Ethics for the New Millennium (New
York: Riverhead Books).
Lama, Dalai (1996),
Beyond Dogma: Dialogues & Discourses
(Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic
Books).
Lane, David Christopher (1997),
“Occam’s Razor: Critical
Essays” (http://elearn.mtsac.edu/dlane/paranormal.htm).
Lane, David Christopher (1996a),
“The Paradox of Da Free John”
(http://vm.mtsac.edu/~dlane/datext.html).
Lane, David
Christopher (1996), “Critique of Ken Wilber” (http://elearn.mtsac.edu/dlane/kendebates.htm, also posted with greater usability at http://www.geoffreyfalk.com/books/LaneMenu.asp).
Lane, David Christopher (1995), The Enchanted Land
(http://elearn.mtsac.edu/philosophy/quest.htm).
Lane, David
Christopher (1994), Exposing Cults:
When the Skeptical Mind
Confronts the Mystical (New York: Garland Publishing; text online at http://www.geocities.com/eckcult/cults.html).
Lane, David
Christopher (1993), “Why I Don’t
Eat Faces: A Neuroethical
Argument for Vegetarianism”
(http://articles.animalconcerns.org/ar-voices/archive/faces.html).
Lane, David Christopher (1992),
The Radhasoami Tradition:
A Critical History of Guru Successorship (http://vm.mtsac.edu/~dlane/radhabook.html).
Lane, David
Christopher (1983), The Making of a
Spiritual Movement: The Untold Story of Paul Twitchell
and Eckankar (Del Mar, CA: Del Mar Press; text
online at http://www.geocities.com/eckcult/index.html).
Lane, David Christopher and Scott Lowe (1996), Da: The Strange Case of Franklin
Jones (http://vm.mtsac.edu/~dlane/dabook.html).
Langone, Michael D.,
ed. (1995 [1993]), Recovery from Cults:
Help for Victims of Psychological and Spiritual Abuse (New York: W. W. Norton & Company).
Larabee, Mark (2000),
“Two Rajneeshee Members
Plead Guilty,” in The
Oregonian, December 16 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/rajneesh/rajneesh6.html).
Lasater, Judith
(1995), “California Yoga Teachers Association Code of Conduct,” in Yoga Journal, November/December (http://www.rickross.com/reference/3ho/3ho52.html).
Lattin, Don (1994), “Best-Selling Buddhist Author Accused
of Sexual Abuse,” November 10
(http://www.american-buddha.com/sogyal.htm).
Lattin, Don (1985a), “Hypnotic Da Free John—Svengali of the Truth-Seeking
Set,” in San Francisco Examiner, April
5 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/adida/adida12.html).
Lattin, Don (1985), “Guru
Hit by Sex-Slave Suit: Stories
of Drugs, Orgies on Free
John’s Fiji Isle,” in San Francisco Examiner,
April 3
(http://www.rickross.com/reference/adida/adida16.html).
Layton, Deborah
(1998), Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor’s Story of Life and Death in the
Peoples Temple (New York: Anchor Books).
Lehnert, Tomek (1998), Rogues in Robes: An Inside Chronicle
of a Recent Chinese-Tibetan
Intrigue in the Karma Kagyu Lineage of Diamond Way Buddhism (Nevada City,
CA: Blue Dolphin Publishing).
Lewy, Guenter
(2000 [1964]), The Catholic
Church and Nazi Germany (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo
Press).
Leydecker, Mary (1985), “Suit Shatters Calm for Sect Members,” in Marin
Independent-Journal, April 5 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/adida/adida10.html).
Lifton, Robert (1989), Thought
Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China (Chapel Hill, NC: University
of North Carolina Press).
Light, Search For (2003), “Short Life-Sketch” (http://www.searchforlight.org/TheMother_lifeSketch.htm).
Lightmind (2004), Daism Research
Index
(http://lightmind.com/library/daismfiles/).
LNI (2003),
“History of Nityananda Institute and Swami Chetanananda” (http://www.leaving-nityananda-institute.org).
Lowe, Scott
(1996), “The Strange
Case of Franklin
Jones” (http://www.american-buddha.com/franklin.jones.htm).
Lutyens, Elisabeth
(1972), A Goldfish Bowl (London:
Cassell & Co.).
Lutyens, Mary (1988),
Krishnamurti: The Open Door (London:
John Murray).
Lutyens, Mary (1983),
Krishnamurti: The Years of Fulfillment
(London: John Murray).
Lutyens, Mary (1975),
Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening
(New York: Avon Books).
Macdonald, Sarah (2003
[2002]), Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure
(New York: Broadway Books).
Mackenzie, Vicki (1999),
Cave in the Snow (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.).
Mackenzie, Vicki (1995),
Reborn in the West (New York: Marlow & Company).
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1995),
Science of Being and Art of Living:
Transcendental Meditation (New York: Penguin).
Maharshi,
Ramana with Robert Powell, ed. (2000), Talks
with Ramana Maharshi: On Realizing Abiding
Peace and Happiness (Carlsbad, CA: Inner
Directions).
Malko, George (1970),
Scientology: The Now Religion
(New York:
Delacorte Press;
full text online at
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/malko/malko.htm).
Mallia, Joseph
(1998), “Church Wields
Celebrity Clout,” in Boston Herald, March 5 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/Scien39.html).
Mandelkorn, Philip,
ed. (1978), To Know Your Self: The Essential Teachings of Swami Satchidananda
(Garden City, NY: Anchor Books).
Mangalwadi, Vishal (1992),
The World of Gurus
(Chicago, IL: Cornerstone
Press).
Manseau, Peter
and Jeff Sharlet
(2004), Killing the Buddha:
A Heretic’s Bible (New York: Free Press).
Marin, Peter (1995), Freedom & Its Discontents (South Royalton,
VT: Steerforth Press).
Marshall, Anne (1963),
Hunting the Guru in India (London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd.).
Marshall, John (1980), “Files Show Spy Reported Woman’s Intimate Words,” in Globe and Mail, January 25 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/
canada/canada6.html).
Mason, Bobbie
Ann (2003), Elvis Presley
(New York: Viking Penguin).
Masters, Robert (1991
[1988]), The Goddess Sekhmet:
Psychospiritual Exercises of the Fifth
Way (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications).
Masters, Robert and Jean Houston (1972),
Mind Games: The Guide to Inner Space (New York: Dell
Publishing Co.).
Mata, Daya (1971), Only Love (Los Angeles:
Self-Realization Fellowship).
Mata, Durga
(1992), A Paramhansa Yogananda Trilogy of Divine Love (Beverly Hills, CA: Joan
Wight Publications).
Matsakis, Aphrodite (1996),
I
Can’t Get Over It: A Handbook for Trauma Survivors (Oakland, CA: New
Harbinger Publications, Inc.).
McCafferty, Dennis (1999),
“Old Bhagwan, New Bottles,” in Salon,
October 20 (http://www.salon.com/books/feature/1999/10/20/osho/).
McDermott, Robert A., ed. (1984),
The Essential Steiner: Basic Writings of Rudolf Steiner
(San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row,
Publishers).
McGehee, Overton (1991),
“Ex-Followers Say Swami
Demanded Sexual Favors,” in Richmond
Times-Dispatch, August 2 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/yogaville/yogaville8.html).
Mehta, Gita (1979),
Karma Cola (New York: Simon &
Schuster).
Meier, Barbara (1992),
“Interview: Jerry Garcia,”
in Tricycle: The Buddhist
Review, Spring 1992.
Michel, Peter (1992),
Krishnamurti, Love and Freedom
(Woodside, CA: Bluestar Communication Corporation).
Midal, Fabrice (2004),
Chögyam Trungpa: His Life and Vision
(Boston, MA: Shambhala).
Miles, Barry
(1989), Ginsberg: A Biography (New York: Simon
& Schuster).
Milgram, Stanley
(1974), Obedience to Authority (New York:
Harper & Row).
Miller, Russell (1987),
Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of
L. Ron Hubbard (Toronto: Key Porter Books Limited;
full text online at http://www.discord.org/~lippard/bfm).
Milne, Hugh (1986), Bhagwan: The God That Failed (New
York: St. Martin’s Press).
Minor, Robert N. (1999),
The Religious, the Spiritual, and the Secular:
Auroville and Secular India (Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press).
Motoyama,
Hiroshi (2000 [1992]), Karma and
Reincarnation: A Key to Spiritual
Evolution and Enlightenment (London: Piatkus).
MSS (2003), Karmayogi
(Pondicherry, India: The Mother’s Service Society; text online at
http://www.motherservice.org/
Life & Teachings/Life and Teachings.htm).
Mukerjee, Dada (1996),
The Near and the Dear: Stories
of Neem Karoli Baba and His
Devotees (Santa Fe, NM: Hanuman Foundation).
Muktananda, Swami
(1999), The Perfect Relationship: The Guru and the
Disciple (South Fallsburg, NY: SYDA Foundation).
Muktananda, Swami (1996),
Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri
(South Fallsburg, NY: SYDA Foundation).
Muktananda, Swami (1981), Where Are You Going? A Guide to the Spiritual Journey (South Fallsburg,
NY: SYDA Foundation).
Muktananda, Swami (1978), Play of Consciousness: A Spiritual
Autobiography (South Fallsburg, NY: SYDA Foundation).
Murphy, Michael
(1992), The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human Nature
(Los Angeles:
Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc.).
Murphy, Padraic
(2000), “Scandal Engulfs
Guru’s Empire,” in The Age (Australia), November 12 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/saibaba/saibaba2.html).
Mussolini, Benito (1927),
“Science and Religion,” in East-West magazine, May/June, Volume 2,
No. 4 (http://www.mysticalportal.net/2-4.html).
Muster, Nori J. (1997), Betrayal of the Spirit:
My Life Behind
the Headlines of the Hare Krishna
Movement (Chicago: University of Illinois Press).
Nahar, Sujata (1989),
Mirra the Occultist (Paris: Institut de
Recherches Évolutives).
Naman, Mard (1980),
“The Pure Ones,” in New West,
December (http://www.rickross.com/reference/3ho/3ho1.html).
National Post (2000), “‘Have
Rabbit, Will Travel’:
Yogic Flyer’s Natural Law
Party Failed to Capture the Imagination,” in National Post (UK), February 9 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/tm/tm7.html).
Neary, Walt (1985a),
“Crazy Wisdom Bent Minds, Say
Ex-Cultists,” in Lake County Record-Bee, April 11. (http://web
.archive.org/web/20031227113341/lightgate.net/archives/
daism-02/daism-02.mv?module=view&viewid=715&row=228).
Neary, Walt (1985),
“Inner Circle Privy to Parties,”
in Lake County Record-Bee, April
12 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/adida/adida7.html).
Nickell, Joe (2002), “Psychic
Pets and Pet Psychics,” in Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 26, No. 6,
November/December (http://www.csicop.org/si/2002-11/pet-psychic.html).
Nickell, Joe (2001),
Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal
(Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky).
Nickell, Joe (1998),
Looking for a Miracle:
Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions & Healing
Cures (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books).
Nikhilananda, Swami (1996),
Vivekananda: A Biography
(Calcutta: Advaita
Ashrama).
Nikhilananda,
Swami, tr. (1984 [1942]), The Gospel of
Sri Ramakrishna (New York: Ramakrishna Vivekananda Center).
Nirodbaran (1990), Sri Aurobindo for All Ages: A Biography
(Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram).
Nisbet, Matt (2000), “The Physics Instructor Who Walks on Fire,”
in Generation sXeptic, October 25 (http://www.csicop.org/genx/firewalk/index.html).
Nityatmananda, Swami (1967),
SriM Darsan (Calcutta: General Printers & Publishers Pvt.
Ltd.).
Nixon, Bob (2004), “Fire Walking Explained,” in “the Skeptic”
Journal (http://www.skeptics.com.au/journal/firexplain.htm).
Nordquist, Ted (1978), Ananda Cooperative Village: A Study in the Beliefs, Values, and Attitudes of a
New Age Religious Community (Uppsala, Sweden: Borgströms Tryckeri AB).
Oakes, Len (1997), Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of
Revolutionary Religious Personalities (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press).
Oates, Robert
M. (1976), Celebrating the Dawn (New
York: Putnam).
Occhiogrosso, Peter (1996),
The Joy of Sects:
A Spirited Guide to
the World’s Religious Traditions (New York: Image Books).
Odajnyk, V. Walter (1993),
Gathering the Light: A Psychology of Meditation (Boston, MA: Shambhala
Publications, Inc.).
Oldmeadow,
Harry (2004), Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious
Traditions (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom).
Olson, Helena (1979), Maharishi at “433”: The Story of Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi’s First Visit to the United States (Los Angeles).
Orwell, George (1980
[1949]), “Reflections on Gandhi,” in The
Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 4: In Front of Your Nose, 1945-1950, Sonia Orwell and Ian
Angus, ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
Paine, Jeffery
(1998), Father India: How Encounters with an
Ancient Culture Transformed the Modern West (New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, Inc.).
Palmer, Susan J. and Arvind Sharma (1993),
The Rajneesh Papers:
Studies in a New Religious Movement (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers).
Panchen, Ngari and
Pema Wangyi (1996), Perfect Conduct:
Ascertaining the Three Vows (Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications).
Partridge, Eric (1947),
Shakespeare’s Bawdy
(New York: Routledge).
Paulsen, Norman (1984), Christ Consciousness
(Salt Lake City, UT: The Builders
Publishing Company).
Peat, F. David (1997), Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm (Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley).
Penny, Bob (1993), Social Control
in Scientology: A Look at the
Methods of Entrapment
(http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/xenu/scs.html).
Perez-Rivas, Manuel
(2000), “A Search
for Serenity,” in Washington
Post, July 6 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/tm/tm10.html).
Phelps, Richard
(1997), “Woman Wins $1.8M for Lecherous Swami,” in The Philadelphia Daily News, national edition (via Associated Press),
September 5 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/ swami_rama/swami_rama1.html).
Pignotti, Monica
(1989), My Nine Lives in Scientology (http://www.factnet.org/Books/9LivesScientology/
nine_lives.html?FACTNet).
PlanetSave (2001), “Sex Scandal Monk Steps Down,”
October 18 (http://web.archive.org/web/20041128090733/
http://www.planetsave.com/ViewStory.asp?ID=1515).
PLANS (2004), “Our Concerns About
Waldorf Schools” (http://www.waldorfcritics.org/active/concerns.html).
Premanand,
Basava (2005), “An Indian Skeptic’s Explanation of Miracles” (http://www.mukto-mona.com/Articles/yuktibaadi.htm).
Premanand, Basava
(1994), Science Versus Miracles,
Volume 1 (http://www.indian-skeptic.org/html/svm_cont.htm).
Pressman, Steven (1993),
Outrageous Betrayal: The Dark Journey
of Werner Erhard from est to Exile (New York: St. Martin’s Press).
Radha, Swami Sivananda
(1992), From the Mating
Dance to the Cosmic Dance: Sex, Love, and Marriage
from a Yogic Viewpoint (Kootenay Bay, BC: Timeless Books).
Radha, Swami Sivananda (1978), Kundalini
Yoga for the West
(Kootenay Bay, BC: Timeless
Books).
Radzik, Jody (2005),
“The Perils of Pedestalization”
(http://www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/Yworship.htm).
Rae, Stephen
(1991), “The Guru Scene: Yes, They’re Still at It! (Celebrity Cult Followers),” in Cosmopolitan, August (http://www.rickross.com/reference/ramtha/ramtha1.html).
Raftery, Mary and Eoin O’Sullivan (2001),
Suffer the Little Children:
The Inside Story of Ireland’s Industrial Schools (New York: Continuum
International Publishing Group).
Rajendra (1976), Journey to the New Age (Sumneytown, PA: Kripalu Yoga Ashram).
Ramakrishna (2003), “Sri Ramakrishna: Biography” (http://www.ramakrishna.org/Rmk.htm).
Rampa, T. Lobsang (1956),
The Third Eye (New
York: Ballantine Books).
Randi, James
(2003a), “Swift: Online
Newsletter of the JREF,”
March 14 (http://www.randi.org/jr/031403.html).
Randi, James
(2003), “Swift: Online
Newsletter of the JREF,”
October 17 (http://www.randi.org/jr/101703.html).
Randi, James
(2002), “Swift: Online
Newsletter of the JREF,”
June 28 (http://www.randi.org/jr/062802.html).
Randi, James (2000),
“Commentary,” December 8 (http://www.randi.org/jr/12-08-2000.html).
Randi, James (1995), An
Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural (New
York: St. Martin’s Press).
Randi, James (1993),
The Mask of Nostradamus: The Prophecies of the World’s Most Famous Seer (Buffalo,
NY: Prometheus Books).
Randi, James (1982),
Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns
and Other Delusions (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books).
Rawlinson,
Andrew (1997), The Book of Enlightened
Masters: Western Teachers in Eastern Traditions (Chicago, IL: Open Court).
Read, Richard
(2001), “In the Grip of the Guru,”
in The Oregonian, July 15
(http://www.oregonlive.com/special/guru/index.ssf?/news/ oregonian/lc_11gside15.frame).
Reeve, Christopher (2002), Nothing is Impossible (New York: Random
House).
Reeves, Jay (2005),
“FBI Probes Alabama
Boy Scouts Membership” (http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=442654).
Rich, Tracey R. (2001), “Judaism 101” (http://www.jewfaq.org/moshiach.htm).
Richardson, John H. (1993),
“Catch a Rising Star,” in Premiere, September (http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/Scien12.html).
Riddell, Carol (1990),
The Findhorn Community: Creating a Human Identity
for the 21st Century (Findhorn, Scotland: Findhorn Press).
Rinpoche, Patrul (1998),
The Words of My Perfect Teacher
(Boston, MA: Shambhala).
Robbins, John (1987), Diet for a New America (Walpole, NH: Stillpoint Publishing).
Robbins, Thomas and Dick Anthony,
ed. (1982), In Gods We Trust: New Patterns of Religious
Pluralism in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books).
Rodarmor,
William (1983), “The Secret Life of Swami Muktananda,” in CoEvolution Quarterly (http://www.ex-cult.org/Groups/SYDA-Yoga/leave.txt).
Ross, Rick (2005c), “Warning Signs” (http://www.rickross.com/warningsigns.html).
Ross, Rick (2005b), “Deepak Chopra” (http://www.rickross.com/groups/deepakchopra.html).
Ross, Rick (2005),
“Frederick Lenz” (http://www.rickross.com/groups/lenz.html).
Ross, Rick (2004d), “Narconon” (http://www.rickross.com/groups/scientology.html#Narconon).
Ross, Rick (2004c), “Church
Universal and Triumphant and Elizabeth Clare Prophet” (http://www.rickross.com/groups/cut.html).
Ross, Rick (2004b),
“Lisa McPherson—Death of a Scientologist” (http://www.rickross.com/groups/scientology.html#mcpherson).
Ross, Rick (2004a),
“Clergy Abuse” (http://www.rickross.com/groups/clergy.html).
Ross, Rick (2004), “Welcome
to the Rick A. Ross Institute of New
Jersey” (www.rickross.com).
Ross, Rick (2003e),
“AP Picks Up NY Times Story About Scientology-Related Program and NYC Firemen,” in Cult News,
October 5 (http://www.cultnews.com/archives/week_2003_10_05.html).
Ross, Rick (2003d), “Sri Chinmoy Discusses Sex, Celibacy and How
To Be a Good Guru” (http://www.rickross.com/reference/srichinmoy/srichinmoy21.html).
Ross, Rick (2003c),
“Is a Yoga Website Promoting
‘Cult’ Groups?” in Cult
News, March 24 (http://www.cultnews.com/2003_03_23_archive.html).
Ross, Rick (2003b), “Goldie
Hawn to Appear at ‘Cult’ Leader’s
Birthday Bash,” in Cult News, August
18 (http://www.cultnews.com/archives/week_2003_08_17.html).
Ross, Rick (2003a), “Time Magazine Plugs a ‘Cult’ Guru’s Plan,”
in Cult News, July 31 (http://www.cultnews.com/archives/week_2003_07_27.html).
Ross, Rick (2003), “Is Dick Anthony
a Full-Time Professional ‘Cult Apologist’?” in Cult
News, March 27 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/apologist/apologist44.html).
Ross, Rick (2002b),
“Cult Influence Growing?” in Cult News, November
13 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/apologist/apologist45.html).
Ross, Rick (2002a),
“Still Crazy After All These Years?” in Cult News, August 1 (http://www.cultnews.com/archives/week_2002_07_28.html).
Ross, Rick (2002),
“Another Hollywood ‘Cult’
Craze,” in Cult News, August 20 (http://www.cultnews.com/archives/week_2002_08_18.html).
Ross, Rick (1998), “Feats of Prowess
Show Spirit’s Inner Strength,”
November 3 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/srichinmoy/srichinmoy17.html).
Royalty (2003),
“William the Conqueror: The Conqueror’s Childhood”
(http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/England/Norman/WilliamI.html).
Rudin, James and Marcia Rudin (1980), Prison or Paradise? The New Religious Cults (Philadelphia,
PA: Fortress Press).
Rudin, Marcia (1996),
Cults on Campus: Continuing Challenge
(Bonita Springs,
FL: American Family
Foundation).
Russell, Peter (1977),
The TM Technique: An Introduction to Transcendental Meditation and the
Teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul).
Russell, Ron (2001a), “Exhuming the Truth: Ben Erskine Says He’s
the Swami’s Love Child and He Wants a Chance to Prove It,” in New Times Los Angeles, November 29 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/selfreal/selfreal4.html).
Russell, Ron (2001), “The Devotee’s Son,” in New Times Los
Angeles, July 5 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/selfreal/selfreal3.html).
Russell, Ron (1999),
“Return of the Swami,” in New Times Los Angeles, July 1-7 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/selfreal/selfreal2.html).
Rutter, Peter (1989), Sex in the
Forbidden Zone: When Men in Power—Therapists,
Doctors, Clergy, Teachers,
and Others—Betray Women’s
Trust (Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc.).
Salkin, Allen (2002),
“Emperor of Air,” in Yoga Journal,
September/October
(http://www.yjevents.com/views/738_1.cfm).
Sanat, Aryel (1999), The Inner Life of Krishnamurti (Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing House).
Sannella,
Lee (2001), The Visionary Life (http://www.skaggs-island.org/humanistic/sannella/
visionarylife.html).
Satchidananda, Swami (1977),
Guru and Disciple (Pomfret Center, CT: Integral Yoga Publications).
Savage, Dan (2005), “Savage Love” (http://www.thestranger.com/current/savage.html).
Schell, Orville (2001),
Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La
from the Himalayas to Hollywood (New York: Henry Holt & Company, Inc.).
Schumacher, Michael (1992),
Dharma Lion: A Biography
of Allen Ginsberg (New
York: St. Martin’s Press).
Schwartz,
John (2004), “Simulated Prison in ’71 Showed a Fine Line Between ‘Normal’ and
‘Monster,’” in the New York Times, May 6 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40D11FB
34590C758CDDAC0894DC404482&incamp=archive:search).
Schwartz, Tony (1996), What Really
Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America (New York:
Bantam Books).
Scott, R. D. (1978),
Transcendental Misconceptions (San Diego, CA: Beta Books).
Seidman, Barry
F. (2001), “Medicine Wars: Will Alternative and Mainstream Medicine Ever Be Friends?” in Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 25, No. 1,
January/February (http://www.csicop.org/si/2001-01/medicine-wars.html).
Seidman, Peter (1985), “Sexual
Experiments Continued After ’76,
JDC Officials Admit,” in Mill Valley
Record, April 10 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/adida/adida8.html).
Self, Jane (1992), 60 Minutes and the Assassination of Werner
Erhard: How America’s Top Rated Television Show was Used in an Attempt to Destroy a Man Who was Making
a Difference
(Houston, TX: Breakthru Publishing).
Sennott, Charles
M. (1992), Broken Covenant: The Story of Father
Bruce Ritter’s Fall from Grace (New York: Simon & Schuster).
Siemon-Netto, Uwe (2002), “Buddhism’s Pedophile Monks,” in UPI
(http://www.american-buddha.com/pedophile.monks.htm).
Shambhala (2003),
“Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa” (http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/vctr/ctrbio.html).
Shapiro, Marc (2002),
Behind Sad Eyes: The Life of George
Harrison (New York: St. Martin’s Press).
Shermer, Michael
(1997), Why People Believe Weird Things:
Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: W. H. Freeman and
Company).
Sherrill, Martha (2000a),
The Buddha from Brooklyn
(http://www.american-buddha.com/buddha.brook.htm).
Sherrill, Martha
(2000), The Buddha from Brooklyn (New
York: Random House).
Shy, David (2004),
“Abstracts of Articles
in Psychological Journals concerning est and The Forum” (http://www.rickross.com/reference/landmark/landmark22.html).
Sil, Narasingha P. (2004), personal
email communication.
Sil, Narasingha P.
(1998), Ramakrishna Revisited: A New
Biography (Lanham, MD: University Press of America,
Inc.).
Sil, Narasingha P. (1997), Swami Vivekananda: A Reassessment
(Mississauga, ON: Associated University Presses).
Silverman, Steve (2003), “William the Conqueror” (http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/william_the_conqueror).
Simon, Stephanie (2004), “Cattle Video
Stirs Kosher Meat Debate”
(http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/
kosher_meat_scandal/).
Singer, Margaret T.
(2003 [1995]), Cults in Our Midst: The
Continuing Fight Against
Their Hidden Menace
(San Francisco, CA: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.).
Singer, Margaret T.
and Janja Lalich (1996), Crazy Therapies:
What Are They? Do They Work? (San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers).
Singh, Siri Scandal (2000),
“More Predictions and Observations
from ‘The Master’” (http://www.rickross.com/reference/3ho/3ho18.html).
Singh, Siri Scandal (1998a),
“3HO Foundation Teachers
Training Courses” (http://www.rickross.com/reference/3ho/3ho9.html).
Singh, Siri Scandal
(1998), “Predictions from ‘The Master’” (http://www.rickross.com/reference/3ho/3ho13.html).
Singh, Siri Scientific (1999), “More from the Master’s
Mouth” (http://www.rickross.com/reference/3ho/3ho55.html).
Sivananda, Swami (1958),
An Autobiography of Sivananda
(Sivanandanagar, India:
Yoga-Vedanta Forest Academy
Press).
Skolnick,
Andrew (1991), “Maharishi Ayur-Veda: Guru’s Marketing Scheme Promises the World Eternal
‘Perfect Health,’” in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical
Association, October 2 (http://web.archive.org/web/20040419100603/ http://www.aaskolnick.com/mav.html).
Sloss, Radha R. (2000), Lives in the Shadow
with J. Krishnamurti
(Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.com,
Inc.).
Smith, Ryan (2004),
“Cults Targeted at Campus Security Conference”
(http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/arts/nav02.cfm? nav02=27097&nav01=18478).
SRF (1976), Paramahansa
Yogananda, In Memoriam: The Master’s Life,
Work, and Mahasamadhi (Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship).
Steiner, Rudolf
(1963 [1923]), Atlantis and Lemuria (Mokelumne, CA: Health Research).
Steiner, Rudolf
(1959), Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man (West Nyack, NY: Rudolf
Steiner Publications, Inc.).
Steiner, Rudolf (1947), Knowledge of the Higher
Worlds and its Attainment (Hudson, NY:
Anthroposophic Press).
Storr, Anthony
(1996), Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinners,
and Madmen: A Study of Gurus (New
York: The Free Press).
Strelley, Kate with Robert D. San Souci (1987),
The Ultimate Game: The Rise and Fall of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
(San Francisco, CA: Harper &
Row, Publishers).
Sturlson, Snorri (1997),
Heimskringla—Norwegian Kings
(Seattle, WA: The World Wide School; http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/european/
heimskringla/HeimskringlaVolume6/chap97.html).
Sullivan, Kelly (2003),
“Religious Sect’s Leader
Visits Local Church Site,” in Chariho Times, July 10 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/ananda/ananda7.html).
Tarlo, Luna (1997), The Mother
of God (Brooklyn, NY: Plover Press).
ThisTruth (2001), “Twisted
Examples of ‘Crazy
Wisdom’ from Adi Da’s
Fantasy World” (http://www.luckymojo.com/esoteric/religion/
tt200112adidabubbafreejohnscandal.txt).
Thompson, Geoff (2000),
“Scandals Follow Thailand’s Monks,” in ABC Online News, Friday, November 24 (http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s216493.htm).
Thurman, Robert A. (2004), Infinite Life: Seven Virtues
for Living Well (New
York: Riverhead Books).
Time (1977), “Yogi
Bhajan’s Synthetic Sikhism,” in Time,
September 5
(http://www.rickross.com/reference/3ho/3ho94.html).
Tobias, Madeleine Landau and Janja Lalich (1994), Captive Hearts, Captive Minds:
Freedom and Recovery
from Cults and Other Abusive Relationships (Alameda,
CA: Hunter House; Joya-related excerpt online at http://www.kashiashram.com/blinded.htm).
Todd, Douglas
(2001), “Holy Man? Sex Abuser? Both?” in Vancouver
Sun, February 27 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/saibaba/saibaba6.html).
Toscani, Oliviero, et al. (2000),
Cacas: The Encyclopedia of Poo
(Los Angeles:
TASCHEN America, Llc.).
TranceNet
(2004), “Shameless Mind” (http://www.trancenet.org/chopra/index.shtml).
TranceNet (2003), “TranceNet: Independent TM Research
Archive” (http://onwww.net/trancenet.org/research/index.shtml).
Trimondi, Victor and Victoria Trimondi
(2003), The Shadow of the
Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism, tr. Mark
Penny (http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Index.htm).
Trungpa, Chögyam
(1981), Journey Without Goal:
The Tantric Wisdom of the
Buddha (Boulder, CO: Prajna Press).
Trungpa, Chögyam
(1977), Born in Tibet (Boston, MA: Shambhala
Publications, Inc.).
Trungpa, Chögyam (1973),
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
(Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications, Inc.).
Turner, Joseph (2001),
“Who is Joseph Turner?” in Tommy Ryden, ed., “Arya Kriya Information” (http://www.tommyryden.com/kriya/turners_life.htm).
Tworkov, Helen (1994 [1989]),
Zen in America: Five Teachers and the Search for an American Buddhism (New
York: Kodansha America, Inc.).
Tyagananda, Swami (2000), Kali’s Child Revisited: Or, Didn’t
Anyone Check the Documentation? (http://home.earthlink.net/~tyag/Home.htm).
Underwood,
Mick (2005), “Social Influence—Conformity” (http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/socinf/
conform.html).
Underwood, Barbara and Betty Underwood (1979), Hostage to Heaven: Four Years in the Unification Church by an Ex Moonie
and the Mother Who Fought
to Free Her (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc.).
Van de Wetering, Janwillem (2001
[1999]), Afterzen: Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear (New
York: St. Martin’s Press).
Van de Wetering, Janwillem (1999 [1973]), The
Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery (New
York: St. Martin’s Press).
Van der Braak, Andre (2003),
Enlightenment Blues: My Years
with an American Guru (Rhinebeck, NY: Monkfish Book Publishing Company).
Van Wolferen, Karel (1990),
The Enigma of Japanese
Power: People and Politics
in a Stateless Nation (New
York: Vintage Books).
Vaughan, Frances (1982), “A Question of Balance: Health and
Pathology in New Religious Movements,” in Journal of Humanistic Psychology.
Vernon, Roland (2001),
Star in the East: Krishnamurti, The Invention of a Messiah (New York:
Palgrave).
Victoria, Brian Daizen (2003),
Zen War Stories (New
York: RoutledgeCurzon).
Victoria, Brian (Daizen) A. (1997), Zen at War (New
York: Weatherhill, Inc.).
Vivekananda, Swami (1947),
The Complete Works of Swami
Vivekananda (Hollywood, CA: Vedanta Press & Bookshop).
Vosper, Cyril (1997 [1971]),
The Mind-Benders: Scientology
(London: Neville Spearman; full text online at http://members.chello.nl/mgormez/books/vosper/).
Wakefield, Margery
(1996), Testimony: The Autobiography of Margery Wakefield (http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/ Web/People/dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/testimony.html).
Wakefield, Margery
(1993), The Road to Xenu: A Narrative Account of Life in Scientology
(http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/xenu/).
Wakefield, Margery
(1991), Understanding Scientology (Tampa, FL: Coalition of Concerned
Citizens; full text online at http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/us.html).
Waldman, Amy (2002), “Old Rajneesh Commune
Lightens Up in Afterlife,” in the New York Times, December 11 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/rajneesh/rajneesh10.html).
Walker, David (1968), William the Conqueror (London: Oxford University Press).
Wallace, Amy (2003),
Sorcerer’s Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda (Berkeley, CA: Frog,
Ltd.).
Wallis, Roy (1976), The Road to Total Freedom: A Sociological
Analysis of Scientology (London: Heinemann
Educational Books Ltd.).
Walls, Jeanette (2003),
“Is Madonna Converting Britney Spears to Kabbalah?” on MSNBC, September 11 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/kabbalah/kabbalah42.html).
Walls, Jeanette
(2002), “Could Scientology Have Saved Elvis?” on MSNBC, October 1 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/
celebrities/celebrities11.html).
Walrus, SRF (2004),
“SRF Walrus Discussion Forum” (http://www.angelfire.com/blues/srfwalrus).
Walsh, Roger (1999),
Essential Spirituality: Exercises from
the World’s Religions to Cultivate Kindness,
Love, Joy, Peace,
Vision, Wisdom, and Generosity (New York: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc.).
Walsh, Roger and Frances
Vaughan, ed. (1993),
Paths Beyond Ego: The
Transpersonal Vision (Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc.).
Walsh, Roger and Frances
Vaughan, ed. (1988),
A
Gift of Healing: Selections from A Course in Miracles (Los Angeles:
Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc.).
Walters, J. Donald (2002),
A
Place Called Ananda:
The Trial by Fire That Forged One of the Most
Successful Cooperative Communities in the World Today (http://www.ananda.org/inspiration/books/place/index.html).
Walters, J. Donald (1995),
“Deposition of Mr. J. Donald
Walters: September 6 – November 30, 1995” (http://www.anandaawareness.com/walters_testifies.html).
Ward, Tim (1998), What the Buddha Never
Taught (Toronto:
Somerville House Publishing).
Warner, Brad (2004),
“Enlightenment Blues” (http://www2.gol.com/users/doubtboy/enlightenmentblues.html).
Warner, Brad (2003), Hardcore Zen (Boston, MA: Wisdom
Publications).
Warner, Judy (1990),
Transformation of the Heart
(York Beach, ME: Samuel
Weiser).
Washington, Peter (1995 [1993]),
Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and
Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America (New York: Schocken Books).
Watanabe, Teresa (1998),
“Teachers or Tyrants?” in L.A. Times,
August 15 (http://www.themotherofgod.com/latimes.htm).
Webb, James (1976),
The Occult Establishment (La
Salle, IL: Open Court).
Webster, Katharine (1990),
“The Case Against
Swami Rama of the
Himalayas,” in Yoga Journal,
December (http://www.rickross.com/
reference/swami_rama/swami_rama2.html).
Webster, Richard (1990),
A
Brief History of Blasphemy: Liberalism, Censorship and “The Satanic
Verses” (Oxford: The Orwell Press).
Welch, Chris (1995),
Teenage Wasteland: The Early
Years (Surrey, England:
Castle Communications).
Welch, David (2001), Hitler: Profile
of a Dictator (New York: Routledge).
Wettig, Hannah
(2002), “‘King of the World’
Preaches Peace Through ‘Yogic
Flying,’” in The Daily Star, November
11 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/tm/tm41.html).
WHAT Enlightenment??! (2005), “WHAT
enlightenment??! An
Uncensored Look at Self-Styled ‘Guru’ Andrew Cohen” (http://whatenlightenment.blogspot.com).
Wheeler, Kate (1994), “Toward
a New Spiritual Ethic,” in Yoga Journal, March/April (http://www.anandainfo.com/new_ethic.html).
White, John (1997),
“The Experience of God-Realization,” in Noumenon:
A Newsletter for the Nondual Perspective (http://www.noumenon.co.za/html/summer_1997.html).
Wiener, Sita (1972),
Swami Satchidananda (New York:
Bantam Books).
Wikipedia (2003),
“Dalai Lama” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalai_Lama).
Wilber, Ken (2002),
“Sidebar A: Who Ate Captain
Cook? Integral Historiography
in a Postmodern Age” (http://wilber.shambhala
.com/html/books/boomeritis/cook/part3.cfm).
Wilber, Ken (2001a), A Theory
of Everything: An Integral Vision for
Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality (Boston, MA: Shambhala).
Wilber, Ken (2001), “Response to McDermott” (http://www.integralworld.net/mcdermott2.html).
Wilber, Ken (2000a),
One Taste: The Journals
of Ken Wilber
(Boston, MA: Shambhala).
Wilber, Ken (2000), Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit,
Psychology, Therapy (Boston, MA: Shambhala).
Wilber, Ken (1998b), “An Update on the Case of Adi Da” (http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/misc/adida_update.cfm).
Wilber, Ken (1998a), “Letter to the Adi Da Community” (http://www.beezone.com/Wilber/ken_wilbers_letter.html).
Wilber, Ken (1998), The Eye of Spirit:
An Integral Vision
for a World Gone Slightly Mad
(Boston, MA: Shambhala).
Wilber, Ken (1996a), “The Case of Adi Da” (http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/misc/adida.cfm).
Wilber, Ken (1996), A Brief History of Everything (Boston, MA: Shambhala).
Wilber, Ken (1995), Sex, Ecology,
and Spirituality (Boston, MA: Shambhala).
Wilber, Ken (1991), Grace and Grit: Spirituality & Healing in the
Life & Death of Treya Killam Wilber (Boulder, CO: Shambhala).
Wilber, Ken (1983b), A Sociable God: Toward a New Understanding of Religion (Boulder, CO: Shambhala).
Wilber, Ken (1983a), Up from Eden (Boulder, CO: Shambhala). Wilber, Ken (1983), Eye to Eye (Boulder, CO: Shambhala).
Wilber, Ken (1982), The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes (Boulder, CO: Shambhala).
Wilber, Ken (1977), The Spectrum
of Consciousness (Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing House).
Willey, David (2002),
“Firewalking Myth vs. Physics”
(http://web.archive.org/web/20031203013713/http://
www.pitt.edu/~dwilley/fire.html).
Wills, Garry (2000), Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit (New
York: Doubleday).
Wills, Garry (1972),
Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy, and
Radical Religion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.).
Wilson, Ian (1988), The Bleeding
Mind (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson).
Winn, Denise (2000
[1983]), The Manipulated Mind:
Brainwashing, Conditioning and Indoctrination (Cambridge, MA: Malor Books).
Woman #2 (1995), “Declaration of XXX in Support of
Cross-Defendants’ Special
Motion to Strike
Cross-Complaint” (http://www.anandaawareness.com/woman_2.html).
Yogananda, Paramahansa (1998),
Autobiography of a Yogi
(Los Angeles:
Self-Realization Fellowship).
Yogananda, Paramahansa (1987 [1953]), The Science
of Religion
(Los Angeles:
Self-Realization Fellowship).
Yogananda, Paramahansa (1986),
The Divine Romance
(Los Angeles:
Self-Realization Fellowship).
Yogananda, Paramahansa (1985),
Beholding the One in
All
(Los Angeles:
Self-Realization Fellowship).
Yogananda, Paramahansa (1984 [1956]), SRF Lessons
(Los Angeles:
Self-Realization Fellowship).
Yogananda, Paramahansa (1982),
Man’s Eternal Quest
(Los Angeles:
Self-Realization Fellowship).
Yogananda, Paramhansa (1946), Autobiography of a Yogi (Nevada
City, CA: Crystal Clarity; http://www.ananda.org/inspiration/books/ay/index.html).
Yukteswar, Swami Sri (1977),
The Holy Science (Los
Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship).
Zablocki, Benjamin
(2001), “Methodological Fallacies
in Anthony’s Critique of Exit
Cost Analysis” (http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~zablocki/Anthony.htm).
Zablocki, Benjamin
(1998), “The Birth and Death of New Religious
Movements” (http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~zablocki/birth%20and
%20death%20of%20new%20religious%20movements.htm).
Zimbardo,
Philip G. (2004b), “A Situationist Perspective on the Psychology of Evil:
Understanding How Good People are Transformed into Perpetrators,” in A. G.
Miller, ed., The Social Psychology of Good and Evil (New
York: Guilford Press;
chapter text available online at http://www.prisonexp.org/pdf/evil.pdf).
Zimbardo, Philip G. (2004a),
“Power Turns Good Soldiers into ‘Bad
Apples,’” in The Boston Globe, May 9 (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/
articles/2004/05/09/power_turns_good_soldiers_into_bad_apples/).
Zimbardo, Philip
G. (2004), “Stanford Prison Experiment Slide Show” (http://www.prisonexp.org).
Zimbardo, Philip G. (2002), “Mind
Control: Psychological Reality
or Mindless Rhetoric?” in APA Monitor, Volume 33, No. 10, November
(http://www.apa.org/monitor/nov02/pc.html).
Zimbardo,
Philip G. (1971), “The Power and Pathology of Imprisonment,” in the
Congressional Record (Serial No. 15, October 25). Hearings before Subcommittee
No. 3, of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Ninety-
Second Congress, First Session on
Corrections, Part II, Prisons, Prison Reform and Prisoner’s Rights:
California (Washington, DC:
U.S. Government Printing Office; text online at http://www.prisonexp.org/pdf/congress.pdf).
Zimbardo,
Philip G., Christina Maslach and Craig Haney (2000), “Reflections on the
Stanford Prison Experiment: Genesis, Transformations, Consequences,” in Thomas
Blass, ed., Obedience
to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm
(Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum; chapter
text online at http://www.prisonexp.org/pdf/blass.pdf).
Zimbardo,
Philip G., Craig Haney, William Curtis Banks and David Jaffe (1973), “The Mind
is a Formidable Jailer: A Pirandellian Prison,” in The New York Times Magazine, April 8 (text online
at http://www.prisonexp.org/pdf/pirandellian.pdf).
Zoll, Rachel (2005),
“Bishops: New Sex Abuse Claims
Top 1,000” (http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/
2005-02-18-bishops-abuse_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA).
Zupp, Adrian (2003), “What Would Buddha Do? Why Won’t the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?” in Counterpunch, October 11/13 (http://www.counterpunch.org/zupp10112003.html).
PERMISSIONS
Every effort has been made to trace
copyright holders of material in this book. The author and editors
apologize if any work has been used without permission and would be
glad to be told of anyone who has not been consulted. Grateful acknowledgment
is made for permission to quote from the following publications:
Quotations from Dodie Bellamy’s
(1995) article, “Eckankar: A For- mer Member Revisits
the Movement,” reprinted with permission of the San Diego Reader.
Quotations from Mick Brown’s (2000)
article, “Divine Downfall,” reprinted with permission of The Daily Telegraph Saturday Maga- zine.
Quotations from Stephen
Butterfield’s (1994) book, The Double
Mirror: A Skeptical Journey into Buddhist Tantra, published by North
Atlantic Books, copyright © 1994 by Stephen T. Butterfield. Reprinted by
permission of the publisher.
Quotation from Susan Cohen’s (2002a)
article, “Swami Satchidan- anda, Integral Yoga Institute, Yogaville—A
Survivor’s Story,” re- printed with permission of Rick Ross and the Ross
Institute (www.rickross.com).
509
Quotations from Lake County’s (1985)
article, “Believers ‘Surren- der’ to Spiritual Master,” reprinted by courtesy
of the Lake County Record-Bee.
Quotation from John Marshall’s
(1980) article, “Files Show Spy Reported Woman’s Intimate Words,” reprinted
with permission of The Globe and Mail.
Quotations from Walt Neary’s (1985)
article, “Inner Circle Privy to Parties,” reprinted by courtesy of the Lake County Record-Bee.
Quotations from Narasingha P. Sil’s
(1998) book, Ramakrishna Revisited: A New
Biography, reprinted with permission of Univer- sity Press of America, Inc.
Quotations from Andre van der
Braak’s (2003) book, Enlighten- ment
Blues: My Years with an American Guru, reprinted with permission of Monkfish
Book Publishing Company.
INDEX
Abortion, 31, 97, 404
Abraham, 401, 427
Abu Ghraib,
327, 333, 346
ACIM (A Course in Miracles), 388-9 Acton, Lord, 445
Adam, 427
Adams, Douglas,
304
Adler, 389
Afterlife, 237; see also Reincarnation Agrarian, 49, 51, 114-5,
177, 309,
326, 330, 379-80, 410, 421
Ahimsa, 84
Ahriman, 218
AIDS, 124-5,
137, 183, 300, 303, 377,
405
Aitken, Robert,
172
Akashic records,
216, 220
Akong, 113, 124, 187
Alaya Stitchery, 293
Alcohol, 3, 14, 38, 51, 75, 85, 96, 119,
121, 124, 145, 179, 310, 411,
430, 449
Aldrin, Buzz,
105
Alhburn, Thomas,
149-50
Alka, 159, 174
Alpert, Richard; see Dass,
Ram Alpha males, 326, 328, 335, 444
Amarnath, 15
Amma(chi), 380, 392, 400
Amorality, 340-1
Amphetamines, 93 Amritananda; see Amma(chi)
Amritanandamayi; see Amma(chi) Amyl nitrite, 396
Ananda community, 237, 258-9, 263,
282, 287, 382; see also Walters,
J. Donald Anandamoy, Br., 278, 403 Anderson
Julie, 157
Pamela, 238
Anthroposophy, 216-7,
219
Anti-Semitism, 42, 203-5
Antichrist, 437
Apocalyptic beliefs,
137, 185, 197,
207, 285, 366, 413, 433
Apologists, cult, 358, 393, 450
Applewhite, Marshall, 104, 324, 416,
439
Aquarian Age, 107
Archaeology, 407
Archery (and Zen), 39, 52, 293
Archetypes, 24
Arendt, Hannah,
173, 346
Ariosophists, 398-9
Arjuna, 246, 295
Arquette, Rosanna,
108, 129
Arunachala, Mount,
24, 438
Asanas, 193, 266
Asch, Solomon (conformity studies of), 154, 363
Asimov, Isaac, 99 Astral
body/reality, 17-8, 24, 28, 30,
111, 152-3,
179, 218, 220,
232, 262, 386, 429-30
moon cannibal
slaves, 153, 445-
6
travel, 429-30,
442
Astrology, 269
Asuras, 18
Asylums, 297, 322, 367
Atack, Jon, 96-9, 101-2,
389
Atheism, 272
Atlantis, 216
Augustine, St., 198
Aum center,
86
Aura, 28, 220, 386, 429, 432, 442
Aurobindo, 17-23,
86, 168, 246, 262,
268-9, 297, 380, 393, 399-400,
423, 438
Auschwitz, 205
511
Avatars, 5-6, 10-11, 19-21,
26, 62, 77,
86-7, 141, 147-8, 222, 229, 238,
246-7, 294-6, 352, 369, 392, 399,
401-2, 410, 412, 415, 423, 438,
448
Ayurvedic medicine,
68
Baba
Meher, 352-7,
393, 399, 423, 434
Neem Karoli,
70-2, 74, 128, 328,
356, 411
Satya Sai, 3, 76-81,
203, 260-1,
292, 298, 356, 370, 380,
392-4, 396, 406, 423, 427,
431, 434-5,
437
Shirdi Sai, 77, 328
Upasani, 328, 352, 410
Babaji, 237, 246-7, 254, 264-6, 290,
353, 423
Bacchanalia, 210
Bailey, David
and Faye, 77, 79, 298,
412
Baker, Richard,
46-9, 258, 382, 412,
442-3
Balasuriya, 201
Ballroom dancing,
127
Baloney, 231, 296, 416
Barbiturates, 365
Bardo realms,
179
Baselines, 123, 164, 364
Bateson, Gregory,
46, 115
Beatles, 2, 59-64, 97, 237-8, 369-70,
394, 437
Beheading, 249, 295, 302
Benedict, 202, 314
Berkshires, 164
Beyerstein, Barry, 79
Bhagavad Gita,
32, 56, 246 Bhagavati, Ma Jaya Sati (Joya),
69,
72-4, 315, 356, 393-4,
400, 403-
4, 406, 416, 423
Bhajan, Yogi, 3, 107-11,
338, 361,
423-4
Bharati, Agehananda, 18, 149, 189-
90, 230-1,
328, 330, 378
Bhikkhu, 381
Bhikshus, 114
Bhumis, 191
Bilocation, 232
Binds, psychological, 29, 123, 296,
313-4, 358-9
Biofeedback, 82
Bioterrorism, 382
Bisexuality, 70, 184, 373
Blackmail, 266
Blackmore, Susan, 269, 387, 430
Bladder control,
369, 437
Blavatsky, Madame,
27-8, 153, 218,
238, 291, 399
Blowjobs, 334
Blueprints, 287-8
Bodhisattvas, vii, 41, 48, 70, 113, 116,
125-6, 175-6,
188, 360, 389, 396,
401, 450-1
Boehm, Deborah
Boliver, 51, 322,
397, 451
Bohm, David,
30, 32-3, 35, 221, 271,
372, 374, 393
Bonder, Saniel, 148
Bono, Sonny,
96, 422
Boomeritis, 17
Bowie, David,
371, 425
Brahmin, 24, 37, 76
Brainwashing, 145, 320, 340, 350,
357-9, 361-2,
423-4, 426, 433,
440; see also Mind control Branch Davidians; see Koresh, David Brand, Stewart, 46
Branden, Nathaniel, 400-1
Brennan, Barbara
Ann, 213, 229, 429
Brewer, Mark, 104, 384 Brogan, Patricia Burke,
317
Brothels, 2, 14, 210, 251, 295; see also
Whorehouses
Brunton, Paul, 24, 352, 354-5
Bunyan, Paul, 90
Burbank, Luther,
233-5
Burke, Abbot George,
247, 269 Burroughs
William S., 95, 115, 181 Catharine, 183; see also
Jetsunma
Butterfield, Stephen,
113, 117, 121,
124, 126, 277, 279, 282, 324,
328, 336, 377, 379, 395, 412,
419, 437, 451
Caddy, Peter/Eileen, 212-3, 215, 221-
2, 224, 226, 236, 380
Caesar, Julius,
246
Campbell, June, 122, 188, 377
Caplan, Mariana,
177, 378, 393-6,
404, 410-1,
416, 444
Capra, Fritjof,
272
Carlin, George,
272
Carroll, Robert,
219, 240, 253, 388
Castaneda, Carlos,
vii, 231, 414, 423,
451
Caste, 24-5,
36-7, 56, 279, 297, 346,
399
Catholicism, 4, 15, 197-210,
240, 277,
291, 298-9, 308-9, 316-8, 326-7,
336, 340, 344, 351-2, 360, 380-2,
391, 415, 421, 425, 435, 440, 443
Cayce, Edgar,
268
Chah, Ajahn,
190, 376
Chakras, 89, 135, 183, 442
Channeling, 28, 183, 212-4,
222, 258,
263, 269, 388, 451
Chaplin, Charlie,
31
Chapman, Graham,
289
Chardin, Teilhard
de, 200, 385
Chatterjee, Aroup,
404, 406
Chenrezig, 176
Chetanananda, 169
Chinmoy, 3, 86-91, 356, 392, 423
Cholera, 219, 222
Chopra, Deepak,
60, 194, 442-4
Choudhury, Bikram,
266
Christopher, Milbourne, 241, 243-4
Churchill, Winston,
18, 246
Cialdini, Robert,
154, 334, 362-3,
365
Clairvoyance, 28, 149, 190, 216, 219-
20
Claus, Santa,
427-8, 447
Cleese, John, 291
Clemens, Paul, 384
Clever Hans,
243-4
Clinton(s), 384-5, 443
Clohessy, David,
327
Clouseau, Inspector, 122
Cohen, Andrew,
3-4, 71, 158-75,
183,
232, 306, 312-3, 316, 322, 329,
353, 356, 371, 374, 388, 393-4,
396, 413, 419, 423, 425-7, 439,
443-4
Leonard, 97
Coltrane, John,
78
Communism, 133, 200, 202, 204, 245,
290, 362, 433
Concubines, 198
Confession, 197-8, 205, 207, 360, 381-
2, 415
Conformity, 154-5, 224, 277-9,
319,
324, 332, 342, 363-4,
390, 435,
448
Confucius, 92, 292
Conjuring, 79, 437
Cooper, Paulette, 97, 100-2, 373,
434-
5
Coronas, 153-5,
220, 337, 341, 370
Corydon, Bent,
95, 98, 100, 102
Cremation, 186
Crittenden, Jack,
444
Crowley, Aleister,
98
Crucifixion, 209, 292
Crusades, 210, 434
Cunnilingus, 251
Cunt, 10, 252, 295, 409
Cyclops, 217
Da Vinci,
Leonardo, 21-2, 267, 269,
301-2, 446
Da, Adi, 3-4, 77, 125, 141-57,
163,
168, 220, 232, 292, 306-7, 323,
328, 330, 337-8, 341, 352-3, 356,
363, 371, 374-5, 394-5,
401, 416,
419, 423, 426-7, 429, 431, 436,
438-9
Dalai Lama; see Lama, Dalai
Darshan, 19, 71-2, 128, 134, 369-70,
392
Darwin, Charles,
27, 200, 218-9,
234
Das, Bhagavan, 70-1, 73-5, 114-6,
119, 277, 404, 434
Lama Surya,
169
Dass, Ram, 69-70, 72-4,
81, 115, 127-
8, 231, 315, 367, 384, 393-4, 404,
411, 416
Davis, Roy Eugene,
263 Decalogue, 206
Decoys, 393-4
Delusions, 105, 153, 219, 307, 320,
354, 394-5,
397-8, 417, 426, 447
Demerol, 396
Demotions, 154,
306
Desai, Yogi Amrit, 4, 192-4, 333
Devas, 213
Devi, Savitri,
399
Devils, 5, 49, 283, 301, 351, 418, 437
Dharma, 42, 46, 124, 126, 182-4,
232,
451
Diabetes, 15
Dianetics, 96, 99-100
Dictators, 257, 321, 349
Dilbert, 287, 289
Dildos, x, 144, 157, 313, 341, 396, 436
Dinosaurs, 22, 387
Diocletian, 202
Doubleday, Abner,
27
Doyle, Thomas,
200, 209, 391
Dreams, 112, 244-5, 293
Druids, 214
Durgananda, 130-1
Dvora, 161-2
Dykema, 114
Emperors, 49
new clothes
of, 146, 155, 325,
334
Ephebophilia, 4, 396
Equinoxes, 268
Erhard, Werner,
3, 95, 103-6, 366,
380, 383-4,
423, 434
Esalen, 48, 291, 390
est, 3, 104-5, 384
Excrement, 132, 221, 374
Fairbanks, Douglas,
352
Faithfull, Marianne,
59, 115
Farrow, Mia, 2, 60-1, 67
FBI, 3, 102, 303
Feudalism, 49, 189, 378
Feuerstein, Georg, 11, 18, 24, 118,
131-2, 142, 144-5, 170, 323, 355,
374-5, 379, 394
Feynman, Richard,
430
Findhorn, 4, 212-5, 221-6,
287, 356,
390
Firewalking, 239, 400, 443
Flynn, Michael,
102
Flynt, Larry,
447
Franken, Al, 421-2
Frankincense, 218
Fraternities, 361-3 Free
John
Da; see Da, Adi Shawnee, 144
Freemasons, 27, 202-3
Freud, Sigmund,
389
Frogs, 342-3
Galileo, 405
Gandhi, Mahatma,
58, 83-5, 139, 237,
260, 280, 392, 410
Garbo, Greta, 31, 237
Garcia, Jerry, 70
Geller, Uri, 442
Genocide, 362, 421
Ghosh, Rakhal,
7
Ginsberg, Allen,
46, 90, 115, 120, 124,
181, 258
Goebbels, Joseph,
398
Goloks, 189
Goodall, Jane,
392
Gopis, 32-3, 292
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 442 Goswami
Amit, 169, 272
Vijaykrishna, 8
Govindan, Marshall, 265
Graceland, 238
Grateful Dead, 60, 62, 70 Great Chain (of Being), 17 Griffin, Merv, 64
Guardian of the Threshold, 218 Guenther, Herbert V., 115, 231, 384
Gurdjieff, 291,
419
Gurumayi, 132, 400, 423
Hagelin, John, 58
Haiku, 45, 122
Hakugen, 41-2
Halifax, Joan, 395-7
Hallucinations, 1, 101, 417, 431, 446-
8
Hanuman, 9, 71, 384
Hare Krishnas,
62-3, 97, 264, 323,
350, 356, 369, 413
Harman, Willis,
388
Harrison, George,
62-3, 78, 237-8,
266, 425
Harvey, Andrew,
126, 134, 185, 367,
376, 400, 415-6, 437
Hassan, Steve, 4, 149, 196-7, 309,
311, 318, 324, 342, 351, 360,
364, 372, 418-20
Hastings, Battle of, 247-8 Hawken,
Paul, 47, 213-4, 224
Hayward, Jeremy,
180-1
Heartbeat, “stopped,” 242, 428
Heaven, 131, 160, 232, 382, 441
Heaven’s Gate, 104, 322, 324, 365,
416, 439
Hegel, 387
Heisenberg, Werner,
103
Helliwell, Tanis,
384
Hermaphrodites, 80, 203
Heroin, 395-6
Herrigel, Eugen,
39
Hierarchy, 17, 27, 30, 82, 111, 190,
210, 317, 324-6, 332, 341, 348,
356, 377-8,
393, 404, 441, 448
Hiley, Basil,
271
Himmler, Heinrich,
399
Hinayana Buddhism,
119
Hitchens, Christopher, 189, 405
Hitler, Adolf, 4, 18-9, 166, 175, 201-2,
204, 246, 290, 398-9, 432
Hodgson, Roger,
237
Holmes, David,
67
Holocaust, 97, 109, 111
Homoeroticism, 8, 13, 72
Homophobia, 134, 140, 302, 405, 416,
442
Homosexuality, 8, 28, 63, 80, 98, 130,
180, 205, 267, 269-70,
277, 373,
405
Horgan, John,
35, 39, 124, 163, 168,
172, 174-5,
387
Hoskins, Cyril; see Rampa, T. Lob-
sang
Houston, Jean, 384-7
Hubbard, L. Ron, 3, 95-102, 115, 359,
380, 389, 423, 426, 434, 436; see
also Scientology Huguenots, 250
Hutton, Lauren,
54, 57
Huxley, Aldous,
31, 97
Hypothermia, 429
Idiot
compassion, vii, 167, 170, 355
tolerance, 355, 411
Incest, 48, 209, 248, 296, 313, 320,
373-4, 408-9,
411, 421
Index Librorum
Probitorum, 200 Inedia, 240
Inquisition, 202, 210, 308, 385, 405
Intoxicants, 92, 375; see also Alcohol
Intuition, 192, 271, 275-6,
285, 290,
293, 405
Isherwood, Christopher, 9
Jaduwallahs, 79
Jagger, Mick,
46, 59, 425
Janakananda, Rajasi,
246, 255, 273
Jesus, 6, 12, 27, 73-5, 77, 81, 104,
110, 143, 161-2, 183, 205, 237-8,
246-7, 253, 262, 265-6,
292, 308,
352, 356, 369, 384, 388, 394,
397, 421, 423, 426-7,
433-6, 447
Jetsunma, 183-6,
287, 293, 308, 322,
356, 371, 391, 400, 413-4, 423
Jews, 3, 97, 158, 166, 175, 202-4, 233,
427; see also Judaism
Jones
Jim, 4, 104, 150-1,
310, 356,
364-5, 397, 413, 416, 419,
423, 427, 433, 438-9
Franklin; see Da, Adi Jonestown, 120, 148, 156, 324-5, 345,
364-5, 382, 414, 445
Joplin, Janis,
62
Josephson, Brian,
60
Joy, W. Brugh, 223-4
Joya; see Bhagavati, Ma Jaya Sati Judaism, 197, 203
Jung, Carl,
232-3, 389
Jungle, 226, 365-6, 376
Jupiter, 111, 262, 430
Kagya lineage,
188
Kaine, Whitney,
157
Kaiser Wilhelm,
246
Kal force,
307
Kamala, 259
Kant, Immanuel,
200
Kapleau, Philip,
39, 41-3
Karaoke, 3, 92, 381
Karma, 88, 108, 161, 173, 218, 230,
250, 284, 287, 294-5,
310, 415,
447
Kempton, Sally;
see Durgananda Karmapa Lama; see Lama, Karmapa Keating, Charles, 406
Keech, Mrs., 285
Kerouac, Jack,
127
Khan, Genghis,
246
Khyenpa, Dusum; see Lama, Kar- mapa
Koestler, Arthur,
39, 84-5, 276, 402-3,
428
Koresh, David,
4, 104, 166, 351, 365,
397, 423, 433
Kowalczyk, Ed, 341, 444
Kripalu, 4, 169, 192-5,
323, 333, 373,
451
Kripalvananda, 192-3 Krishna
Lord, 7, 21, 27, 32, 56, 62, 246,
272, 292, 352, 392, 397,
401, 438
Hare; see Hare Krishnas
Krishnamurti, Jiddu, 2, 26, 28-37, 78,
138, 245, 393, 423, 441
Kriya yoga, 159, 227-9,
237-9, 247,
257, 263-5, 290, 300, 327
Kriyananda, 237, 243, 245-8,
255-7,
259-61, 263, 269, 291
Kundalini, 30, 107-8, 111, 129, 142,
159, 192-3, 229, 269, 277, 386
Kunley, Drukpa,
373-5, 379, 409, 432,
442
Kyosaku, 40, 44
Lalich, Janja, 74, 104, 154, 314, 321-
2,
324, 406, 409, 434, 439
Lama
Dalai, x, 46, 48, 113, 176-80,
182-3, 187, 190-1, 221, 236,
245, 297, 330, 368, 373-4,
377-8, 388, 398, 405, 409,
423, 442-3
Karmapa, 116, 186-7, 297, 308,
377-8
Lane, David,
152, 220, 232, 264, 337,
387, 418, 424, 430, 434
Language, loading of, 207 Leadbeater, Charles, 26, 28-30
Lemuria, 216-7
Lenin, Vladimir,
104, 406
Lennon, John, 78, 238, 386
Lenz, Frederick, 89
Leprechauns, 384, 396, 446
Lerner, Michael,
443-4
Letterfrack school,
316-7
Levitation, 2, 64, 232 Lifton, Robert J., 207 Lindbergh, Charles,
246
Lions, 260, 318, 320, 386
Lisieux, Thérèse
of, 199, 340
Lolita, 376
Lozowick, Lee, 394, 444
Lucas, George,
261-2
Luciana, Sal, 156
Lucifer, 262
Lysenko, 234
Ma, Ananda Moyi, 380, 402, 423
Macho behavior, 40, 170
Maciel, Father,
207
Madonna, 108, 238
Maezumi; see Roshi, Maezumi Mafia, 63, 99
Magdalene, Mary, 134, 246
Magic(k) 2-3, 24, 66, 78, 93, 98, 188,
190, 218-9,
241, 386, 437, 451
mushrooms, 75, 277
Maharajji; see Baba, Neem Karoli Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 2, 58-68, 76,
103, 163, 230, 356, 369, 383,
390, 422
Maharshi, Ramana,
23-5, 76, 159,
168, 172-3,
297, 380, 399, 423,
438
Mahasamadhi, 253
Mahasaya, Lahiri,
237, 246-7, 264,
423
Maitreya, 27-8,
96, 113, 126
Mandela, Nelson,
87
Manicheans, 198
Manson, Charles,
97, 289, 366, 390,
397, 416, 423
Mantras, 34-5, 59, 62-3,
165, 187, 229
Maradiaga, Cardinal Oscar Rodri-
guez, 201
Marijuana, 110, 135, 396
Marines, 324, 440
Marpa, 395
Marx-Hubbard, Barbara,
150, 171
Massage, 56, 97, 109, 259
Masturbation, 28, 135, 171, 180, 184,
192, 206-7,
230, 251, 334, 375,
381-2, 435
Mata
Daya, 231, 238, 248, 255-7, 263,
269, 272-3,
278, 284, 287,
295, 369, 400, 403
Durga, 235, 248, 255
Tara, 267-9,
302, 391, 400
Materializations, 28, 77-9, 394
Matsakis, Aphrodite, 313
Maya, ix, 5, 307, 418
Mayan Indians,
407
McCartney, Paul, 61, 425
Medicine
alternative, 99, 221, 331
Anthroposophical, 219
care in cults, 63, 197, 199, 283,
287, 396
Meera, Mother,
400, 415-6, 423
Mehta, Gita, 276, 267, 376 Melton, J. Gordon, 364 Menninger Foundation, 82
Menstruation, 7, 202
Merwin, William,
117-21, 124, 337,
348, 379
Mescaline, 396
Messiahs, 26, 31, 100, 136, 138, 162,
351-2, 398-9,
423, 427; see also
Avatars Michelangelo, 21-2
Midler, Bette,
298
Milarepa, 113, 377, 395
Milgram, Stanley,
155, 343-5, 347-8,
366
Mind control, 57, 320-1,
333, 342,
358-60, 362-4, 418, 420, 426,
432, 440; see also Brainwashing
Missionary zeal, 308 Mitchell
Edgar, 129
Joni, 115
Molestation, 68
Mona Lisa,
22
Moonies, 284, 315, 318, 324, 342, 350-
1, 356, 413-4, 418-9
Mother
Center, 228, 239, 292, 296, 300
Divine, 2, 9-11, 19, 72, 236, 294,
392, 402, 404
Meera; see Meera, Mother The (Aurobindo’s), 18-23,
400,
423
World, 37
Mount Cashel,
201
Mudras, 178, 193
Muhammad, 352, 397, 401
Ali, 87
Muktananda, 3, 115, 128-32,
138,
142-3, 356, 366, 370, 393, 396,
400, 416, 422-3, 438, 443, 445,
448
Murphy, Michael,
10, 48, 384, 390
Mussolini, 246, 257, 290
Myss, Caroline,
224
Myths, 6, 23-4, 70, 74, 99, 120, 141,
192, 217, 244-5, 292, 375, 399,
407, 414, 418, 436, 448, 452
Nanak, Guru, 109
Nantembo, 41
Napoleon, 21, 156, 246
Narcissism, 20, 142, 174
Narconon, 96
Narcotics, 276-7,
396
Naropa, 115-7, 119-20, 126-7,
146,
181, 185, 348, 443
Nazis, 118, 173, 204, 233, 271, 321,
349, 364, 398-9, 441
Necrophilia, 94, 381
Nero, 49, 202
Nettles, Bonnie
Lu, 104, 324, 439
Neumann, Therese,
240-1, 246, 297
Neuroses, 29, 314
Nitrous oxide,
138-40, 396
Nityananda, 128, 131, 138, 222, 236,
370, 445
Institute, 169
Normandy, 247, 249
Nostradamus, 137
Nydahl, Lama Ole, 187, 308
Nyingma lineage,
126, 168, 182-3,
377
Oedipal complexes, 72
Olam Ha-Ba,
203
Olcott, Henry,
27
Ono, Yoko, 62, 78, 87, 105, 386
Ontological reality,
430-2
Ophelia, 252, 295 Oppenheimer, J. Robert,
372 Orgasm, 181
Orgies, x, 396
Orgone, 181
Orme-Johnson, 65
Orr, Leonard,
265
Orwell, George, 345, 422
Osho; see Rajneesh Outcastes, 56,
347, 362
Ozone, 171
Padmasambhava, 113
Paganism, 406
Palmo, Tenzin,
114, 178, 185, 309
Palyul lineage,
183
Paramatman, 8
Paranoia, 101-2,
105, 113, 165, 194,
203, 284, 378, 389
Paranormal, 79, 388, 429-31,
447
Parapsychology, 2, 241, 243, 269, 297,
387, 428-30,
432
Parsnips, 333
Pascal, Blaise,
510
Pasewalk Hospital,
448
Passover, 426
Patanjali, 64, 84
Pathologies, 101, 194, 224, 315, 324,
349, 382, 390, 421, 436
Patriarchy, 62, 185, 326, 406-7
Paulsen, Norman,
247-8, 261-2, 446
Pavlov, 29, 104, 170
Peaceniks, 321,
441
Pedophilia, 4, 7, 9, 72, 81, 104, 201-3,
205, 210, 291, 396, 404, 421, 431
Penis, 2, 8, 10, 252, 374, 376
Perls, Fritz, 134, 389
Peyote, 277
Pfungst, Oskar,
244
Phobias, indoctrinated, 197, 207, 309
Pickford, Mary, 352 Pickstone, H. E. V., 234 Pignotti, Monica,
100, 452
Pilarczyk, Daniel,
202
Pimps, 111, 251
Pipsqueaks, 403
Plagiarism, 27, 418
Polanski, Roman,
390
Polygamy, 139, 157, 373
Poonja, 71, 159-62, 172-3
Pope, 197-99,
201, 204, 248, 327, 404
Alexander VI,
210
Benedict XVI,
202
John XII, 198
John Paul II, 179
Pius IX, 198
Pius X, 200, 340
Pius XI, 257
Pius XII, 200, 204-5,
207
yogic, 58, 82, 107, 272
Pornography, 3, 93, 102, 126, 144,
375
Postmodernism, 49, 115, 326,
330,
421
Prabhupada, 62-3; see also Hare Krishnas
Prana, 193
Pranam, 72, 273-4
Pratt, Mona; see Mata, Tara Premanand, Basava,
242, 392
Premananda, 264 Presley
Elvis, 238, 369-70, 427
Lisa Marie,
97
Priscilla, 97
Preston, Kelly, 97, 102
Promiscuity, 300, 405, 411
Pronam, 273-4
Prostitution, 93, 111, 135, 140, 162,
180, 251, 381; see also Brothels;
see also Whorehouses Pruning, 292
Psilocybin, 396; see also magic mush- rooms
Psychic, 235, 285
level, 24, 386
Psychoses, 231, 448
Puranas, 10, 268
Purges, 200, 202, 257
Puritans, x, 409-11
Python, Monty,
162, 288, 291, 383
Quaaludes, 396
Quadrants, 220
Radha, Sivananda, 229-30, 276, 287,
369-70
Rainbows, 112, 244, 431
Rajagopal, 19, 22, 24
Rajasi; see Janakananda, Rajasi Rajneesh, 3, 133-40, 163, 246, 276,
287, 294, 306, 313, 316, 321,
338, 342, 356, 370, 376, 380,
382-3, 389-90,
395, 403, 413,
416, 419, 421, 423, 426, 433,
436
Rajneeshpuram, 136-7,
366, 369, 382,
396, 403, 445
Rama, 7, 9, 352
Swami, 2, 82-5, 287, 395, 410,
423
Zen Master, 89 Ramaiah, Yogi; see Yogiyar
Ramakrishna, 2, 6-11, 13, 72, 143,
153, 222, 237, 292, 300, 328,
356, 376, 379, 384, 392-3, 396,
399-400, 422-3, 427, 431, 435,
437, 441, 447
Rampa, T. Lobsang, 190, 231
Rand, Ayn, 400-1
Yvonne, 49, 317
Randi, James,
64-5, 79, 137, 183, 239,
268, 428-30
Rape, ix, 48, 63, 80, 130, 209, 311,
313, 410
Ratzinger, Joseph,
202
Ravenscroft, 399
Rebirthing, 265
Reeve, Christopher, x, 98, 238, 448
Reincarnation, 2, 13, 21-2,
31, 62, 96,
104, 113, 134, 139, 162, 176-7,
180-3, 185-6,
188, 244-7, 250,
267, 269-70,
295, 301, 310, 392,
415, 446-7
Renaissance, 16, 230
Rexroth, Kenneth,
127
Ringo, 60, 62, 369, 371, 425
Rinpoche
Dilgo Khyentse,
126, 183
Kalu, 188
Penor, 168-9,
182-3, 185-6, 414
Serkong, 262
Sogyal, 297 Ripper, Jack the, 432
Rishikesh, 53, 60-1, 230, 331
Ritter, Bruce,
208
Rmoahals, 216 Robbins
Anthony, 128, 443
John, 424
Tom, 357-8, 425
Roddick, Anita, 169, 171
Ronstadt, Linda, 48 Roshi
Eido, 38
Katagiri, 44
Maezumi, 38
Omori, 42
Roulette, Catholic, 205 Rousseau,
Jean Jacques, 200
Rubaiyat, 283
Rudrananda (Rudi),
142
Russell, Bertrand,
31
Rutter, Peter,
408
Sade, Marquis
de, 308
Sadism, 224, 251, 316-7, 325-7, 332-5,
344-7, 349, 361, 364, 448
Sadomasochism, 340
Sagan, Carl,
389
Salmonella, 137, 140, 403
Samadhi, 8-9, 12, 73, 133, 236, 253,
270
Nirvikalpa, 428
Samaya, 116, 122
Sanghas, 162, 164-5, 378-9,
381, 420,
445
Sannyasis, 135, 306
Santana, Carlos,
72, 89-91
Sarcophagus, 237, 250
Sarvastivadin, 114
Satan, ix, 5, 63, 205, 283-4,
294, 418,
420; see also Maya
Satchidananda, 2, 11, 53-7, 125, 222,
229, 356, 444
Satori, 133, 168; see also Samadhi
Scapegoats, 202, 316-7
Schizophrenia, 101-2,
175, 446
Schlitz, Marilyn,
430
Schucman, Helen,
388
Schuon, Frithjof,
401-2
Scientology, viii, 3, 95-102,
104, 106,
115, 156, 207, 273, 350, 356,
359, 373, 416, 418, 434-6, 448,
452
Scrofula, 247
Scrooge, 147
Seagal, Steven,
182, 186, 189
Seligman, Martin,
312
Senzar, 218
Shabd yoga,
220, 262, 387
Shakespeare, William,
21, 250-3, 270,
295-6
Shakti, 77, 143
Shaman, 179, 185
Shankar, Ravi,
59, 237
Shankara, 13, 82, 255
Shankaracharya, 82, 255
Shaolin, 183
Sheela, 137, 316, 382-3
Sheen, Charlie,
102
Sheep, 87, 320, 398
Sheldrake, Rupert,
170
Shiva, 10-2, 15, 77, 130, 192, 229,
399, 401
Siddhas, 24, 113, 129, 131, 256, 438
Siddhis, 64, 153
Siegelman, Jim, 101, 416-7, 420
Sikhism, 107-9
Singh, Kirpal,
262, 264
Sivananda, 53-4, 169, 229-30,
370,
423
Skepticism, 64, 78, 99, 121, 153-4,
219, 242, 276-7, 387, 389, 429
Slavery, 95, 152-3, 259, 262, 354, 420,
446
Snyder, Gary, 46, 122, 258
Socrates, 51
Soen/Soyen/So-on, 41, 50
Sogaku, 41
Sogen, 41
Sogyal, 297
Spangler, David,
214
Spine, 9, 24, 30, 192, 235, 384
Springsteen, Bruce,
55, 89
Stalin, Joseph,
200, 202, 234, 246
Star Trek, 183
Steiger, Brad,
264
Steiner, Rudolf,
215-20, 399
Stoen, Tim, 439
Stonehenge, 246
Stooges, Three, 117
Stravinsky, Igor, 31
Suicide, 34, 120, 266, 311-2, 364-6,
373, 393; see also Jonestown Superintendent role (in
Stanford
prison study),
307, 319-21, 325,
331, 334, 341, 344, 379
Supertramp, 237
Surmang monastery, 112, 114
Sutcliffe, Stuart, 67 Suzuki
D. T., 27, 39, 41, 43, 127
Shunryu, 45-6, 50, 123
Swann, Ingo, 430
Swayze, Patrick,
97
SYDA, 129, 131-2; see also Muktan- anda, see also Gurumayi
Syphilis, 252, 296
Taimni, I. K., 277
Tantra, 3, 10, 35, 55, 75, 107-8, 111,
115, 117, 122, 134, 178, 277, 409
Targ, Russell,
218
Tassajara, 46-8
Tate, Sharon,
390
Taylor, James,
129
Tendzin, Ozel, 116, 124-6,
183, 187,
451
Teresa, Mother,
208, 340, 404-6
Thanksgiving, 172, 274
Theosophy, 2, 26-8, 30-1, 37, 217-8,
238, 270, 398, 418
Theravada Buddhism,
51
Thetans, 96, 434
Thoreau, 281
Thurman, 46, 442-3, 449 Ti; see Nettles, Bonnie
Lu Tigunait, Rajmani, 83-5
Tikkun, 443
Tilopa, 117
Tirtha, Shankaracharya Bharati Krishna, 255
Torture, 68, 134, 189, 308, 360, 362
Totalitarianism, 173, 257, 345, 358-9,
391
Townshend, Pete, 352, 354
Travolta, John, 96-7, 436
Trimmer, Shelley,
236
Trungpa, Chögyam,
3, 112-27, 163,
168, 178, 181, 183, 187-8, 231,
279, 282, 310, 318, 322, 336-7,
348, 356, 366, 377-9, 384, 393-6,
412-3, 416, 419, 422-3,
443, 445,
451
Tulkus, 112-3, 115, 182-4,
186, 188-9,
244-5, 378, 414-5, 431
Twitchell, Paul,
264
UNICEF, 302-3, 385
Upanishads, 34, 232
Ustashi, 204
Vajra
Guard, 122
hell, 308-9, 411
Vajradhatu, 119, 126, 187
Vajrayana Buddhism,
117, 119, 121,
125-6, 178, 277, 336
Van
der Braak, Andre,
4, 160, 162-7,
169, 306-7, 312-3, 329, 413,
419
Van Houten, Leslie,
289-90 Varela, Francisco, 180-1
Vatican, 200, 202, 204, 335, 372
Vaughan, Frances,
371, 373, 387-8
Vedas, 10, 62, 64, 96, 328, 356
Vegetarianism, 61, 275, 398, 424-6
Velikovsky, Immanuel, 220
Vibhuti, 77, 79, 394
Vipassana, 127
Vishnu, 399
Vishwamitra, 72
Vivek, 134, 246, 395
Vivekananda, 2, 6, 8, 11-6, 22-3,
143,
153, 230, 237, 380, 422-3, 437
Von Dullinger, J. H., 399 Voodoo, 100
Voyeurism, 134
Wakefield, Margery,
viii, 95, 98,
100,
102, 273, 339, 359, 416
Waldorf schools,
215-7
Wallace, Amy, viii, 414, 451
Walrus, SRF, 292, 302, 325
Walsh, Roger,
23, 387-9, 405
Walters, J. Donald, 236-7, 248, 257-
60, 263, 382, 391, 403; see also
Kriyananda
Watts, Alan,
39, 46, 127, 141
Weaver, Dennis,
237
Weezer, 55
Welwood, John, 115, 384, 394 West, Louis Jolyon, 365 Whitson,
Judith Skutch, 388
Whorehouses, 14, 73, 295, 396; see
also Prostitution
Wicca, 407
Wilber, Ken, 4, 44, 130, 166-7,
171-2,
181, 183, 232, 269, 341, 350,
353, 366, 376, 383-4,
387, 389,
393, 401-2, 414, 427, 442-4
and suicide/leaving wife, 310-12,
359
and Velikovsky, 220
brain-dead, 428
enlightenment of, 168, 231, 300,
374-5, 432, 449
on ACIM, 388
on Adi Da, 141-2,
147-53, 155-6
on Andrew
Cohen, 167, 169-70,
175
on Aurobindo, 17-8
on brainwashing, 356-7
on
Chögyam Trungpa, 120-1, 125
on crap-beating Zen, 39-40
on geeks, 181
on Maharshi, 23-4
on masturbation, 334 on Mother Teresa,
405
on Rudolf Steiner,
219-20 Wiretapping, 137-8, 140, 382
Witches, 63, 384
Witch-hunts, 202, 210, 362, 434
Xenu/Xemu, 96, 100, 426
Yasodhara, 287
Yoda, 262
Yogananda, Paramahansa, viii, 4, 62,
102, 159, 161, 227-303,
326, 353,
392, 400, 402, 418, 421-3, 426-7,
434, 445; see also Kriya
yoga
and Perfume
Saint, 241-2, 297 and
Therese Neumann, 240-1,
246, 297
dietary advice of, 275
embalming of, 253-4
harem of, 296-7
on rules and creativity, 280 prophecies of, 246-7
pulse-stopping trick,
242, 297
reincarnations of, 246-7
Yogiyar, 264-5
Yugas, 268
Yukteswar, 227-8,
237, 246-7, 268,
423, 434
Zazen, 39, 363
Zen, 2, 27, 38-52, 104, 114, 139, 167-
8, 172, 190, 293, 322, 330, 338,
356, 363, 379, 382, 396-7, 450-1
Zimbardo, Philip,
305
Stanford prison study of, vi, 305- 321, 324-5, 332-4, 341-9,
358-9, 361, 364, 366, 423,
441
“adult consent” in, 319 and high schools,
347-8
and
“learned helplessness,” 312-3,
339
breakdowns in, 310, 318-9
deindividuation in, 306 “good” guards in, 334-6,
345-6, 349
leaving/parole from,
307,
324
powerlessness in,
307
privileges in,
306
respect in, 305, 316, 319,
324, 327, 332, 344,
346-7
role-playing in, 320-1, 345
sadism in, 316-7, 325-7,
332-5, 344-7,
349
“slow descent” in, 343 “troublemakers” in, 317,
325, 344
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Geoffrey D. Falk ( www.geoffreyfalk.com ) The Science of the Soul: On Consciousness and the Structure of Reality , “Norman Einstein”: The Dis-Integration of Ken Wilber ve Hip Like Me: Years in the Life kitaplarının yazarıdır. Bir "Saçlı Kişi"nin. Manitoba Üniversitesi'nde elektrik mühendisliği ve fizik okudu. Bunu takiben sınıfının en iyisi bir bilgisayar programcısı olarak kıçını tekmeledi . Şu anda zamanını yazarlık, yazılım geliştirme ( www.crmfrontiers.com ) ve müzik kompozisyonu ( www.myspace) arasında paylaştırıyor.
.com/geoffreyfalk ).
523
Not: Bazen Büyük Dosyaları tarayıcı açmayabilir...İndirerek okumaya Çalışınız.
Yorumlar