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Stripping the Gurus (and Pandits)
I started browsing the book Stripping the Gurus, Sex Violence, Abuse, and Enlightenment.
ONE OF MY DEAR, late mother’s most memorable expressions, in attempting to get her children to behave, was simply: “Be sure your sins will find you out.”I haven't read everything yet but there seem to be a lot of "dirt tossing" about different spiritual teachers, even philosophers. There's also a chapter on Scientology (very ballsy). And of course, my favorite chapter is about Norman Einstein (aka Ken Wilber). Check it out. It has tons of hyperlinks. Looks like a fun read. Just keep this age-old maxim in mind:
It may take a minute, an hour, a day, a year, ten years or more, but eventually the details of one’s behaviors are likely to surface. Whether one’s public face is that of a saint or a sinner, ultimately “the truth will out.”
This book, then, concerns the alleged sins which have been concealed behind the polished façades of too many of our world’s “saintly and sagely” spiritual leaders and their associated communities, with a marked focus on North America over the past century.
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.Thanks to Frank for the book link.
- The Buddha
April 12, 2005 at 10:19 PM in iBlogs | Permalink
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Yeesh. Not so much a "fun" read for me, although useful.
I remember reading the David Lane stuff a long time ago, and thinking "boy, this guy has misunderstood what Ken Wilber is talking about!"
Which he had, in a variety of ways.
The stuff about Bohm is interesting though, and I'm going to need to take a look at that.
Thanks for the links.
Posted by: ebuddha | Apr 14, 2005 3:39:47 PM
(Warning- Long Rant Ahead)
Mmm... I liked the articles that sliced up Rajneesh, Da, Chinmoy (who is frankly the one that ticks me off the most, especially since people who haven't looked into him tend to see him as a nice Dalai Lama figure and not the creep he really is), and Scientology (though "A Piece of Blue Sky" does this even better- after reading that one, I spent some time around a scientology org just for kicks, to see how cult-thinking works- it's a valuable experience, as long as you've uploaded plenty of bullshit protection software first...)
Now, while I don't think Cohen is the brightest stick in the shed, I don't think I can pass judgement on him yet (though I think Wilber's association with him is a mistake on Wilber's part, as is Don Beck's association with Cohen, whatever that may be.) Hell, WIE would be my favorite magazine if it wasn't for Cohen!!! If only a group of integrals could start a zine as good... :)
As for Wilber, I think the man's biggest problem, and weakness, isn't his theory (which, flaws aside, I find extremely useful), but his personal, romantic desire for what he's refered to in his writings as a "Buddha for the Internet age", a postmodern realizer that is as great as the image he's set up in his head of sages of old, a messianic figure who will wake up the world, start a serious post-modern spiritual movement, and start a revolution of sorts... while Wilber is seldom this breathless about it, he makes these allusions in his book, it's implicit in his discussions of the necessity of realization- and it's obvious from his actions.
Wilber wants a spiritual hero, a Buddha, a Jesus, a Mohammed, a Moses, somebody who will unpack the divine in a postmodern context. So he latches on to people like Da or Cohen, blinded by his own desire for a world-changing superhero. Now, when the bliss wears off, Wilber is gentleman enough to admit he was at least half-wrong (as he did with Da), and I'm betting he'll do the same with Cohen in a couple of years, when Cohen finds himself embroiled in a serious scandal. I'm just afraid such a scandal could bring down Integral Institute, which is why I'm extremely worried that Integralism and WIE? are becoming way too intertwined. Given that WIE, for all practical intents, is the publication of the Integrals right now, this is a scary possiblity, and it will leave a lot of egg on Wilber's face too.
I, like Wilber, love the idea of a postmodern spiritual ubermensch who will unite eastern and western thought and start a spiritual revolution. I dream of it too (heck, in my more egotistical moments, I dream of being that person). My fantasy tends to get especially romantic, as I tend to dream of a techno-gnostic Christ who renews Christianity as a posthuman spiritual movement, a trippy combination of Teilhard, Crowley, Extropianism, and Christian mysticism... but that's only in my highest flights of fancy that I really consider such a possibility. But I despair, because all I seem to see are:
1. Genuinely benevolent, simple tradition-bound spiritual teachers who, while possibly authentic, are extremely boring, not very inspiring, and overall disillusioning... such as the Zen masters and Christian monks that I've met... Eckhart Tolle also strikes me as one of these, I found "The Power of Now" to be a very good book on meditation and awareness, but it didn't "blow my spiritual doors off".
2. Exciting, daring teachers who talk of world-transformation, have ideas which set my heart aflame, and turn out to be complete crooks or at least extremely unrealistic and somewhat shady... such as Da, Cohen, Aurobindo, Blavatsky and Crowley (most of the occultists I know of fall into this category, actually, which I find a terrible shame given that I consider myself a Thelemic/Hermetic-Christian), etc.
In the West, we have three characters who are seen as our spiritual paragons- Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. The three founders of the three great monotheistic faiths. And none of them were milquetoasts. Everyone here grew up with one or more of these men as their idea of a spiritual hero- even western atheists can't escape that, as they're ingrained into our popular consciousness. So, for me, Wilber, and many others, there is a persistent desire for a hero, a postmodern equivalent of these men, to come and, if not "save us", at least shake things up again. Islam and Christianity both arose in times of both great "decadence" and great change, and there is a persisting desire that I (and Wilber) feel for a change like that now- not a return to a more conservative past, but a complete paradigm shift- something totally new. Wilber feels this too, and he's looking for a information-age Moses to lead us to the spiritual promised land.
And this, I believe, is what lets him get sucked in by charlatans. For all his amazing intellect, this is his Achilles' heel. It's not a desire for an eastern-style guru relationship as much as a classic, western spiritual ubermensch, a superhero like the Jesus he grew up with. He wants a second coming, an apocalypse, and while he doesn't frame it in the comically hellish way that Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins do, it's the same deal. Of course, I feel the same desire all the time. I'm human- I want some final telos to aspire to, and a living symbol of that telos, a heroic leader.
Now, this leads to a few more questions:
Were these figures, these spiritual superheroes, really realized?
1. Moses, as we know him today, three thousand years after he supposedly lived, is a fairly mythologized figure only accessible through a book compiled centuries after his death. While Wilber classifies him as subtly realized (blue/subtle, technically), we have about nil in the way of actual evidence of this, though I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
2. Jesus is slightly more accessible than Moses- slightly. While Wilber considers him a nondual realizer (and I believe in this as an article of faith, as I, as a Christian, believe Jesus Christ to be the most enlightened realizer in history), modern scholarship tells us that this is a very fuzzy understanding of a man who could have been understood in many different ways- possibly a simple political rebel, or a schizophrenic heretic.
3. Mohammed is much more ethically spotty than the other two, and many scholars think he might have simply been a con artist out for power. While I'm not sure of this reductionistic interpretation, and I'd be willing to guess that the historical Mohammed at least had regular subtle peak experiences, getting at the historical Mohammed is made extra-hard by the Muslim world's attitude toward "Mohammed Studies". Whereas "Jesus Studies" is a huge, well-picked-over field, and "Buddha studies" is an open field of discussion in most modern Buddhist nations, questioning the Seal of the Prophets is a good way to get silenced, ostracized or even killed in much of the Muslim world.
So, while I want a new revelation, it doesn't seem to be in the cards. And if this is so, what does it say for Wilber and his theory? While I don't think it invalidates AQAL, or his preconventional-through-early-postconventional parts of his theoretical work, which is still brilliant and useful, I think it does make us have to seriously assess the "higher states"- not to mention, the people who embody them- and make us ask, "what are these good for, anyway?"
Posted by: Nicq MacDonald | Apr 18, 2005 9:08:15 PM
