I don't think spiritual bypassing is given nearly enough air time, and when it is, it's as a one-off event that happened to that weird guy. Everyone bypasses, regularly. When you have a practice perspective that essentially recommends disengaging from the content of your experience, you're set up to bypass. I don't think it's a Bad Thing; it's just A Thing that we should expect to happen until we're wise enough to know better. The more we expect it, the more intimate we can get with its mechanics and the quicker we can lift up the blinders and be here sans trickery.
Cosigned! There is no perfectly solid boundary between "using meditation to change your reactions to your problems, or redefining them as non-problems" and "using meditation to ignore your real problems."
Occam’s razor says the Pragmatic Dharma folks retained the title “spiritual enlightenment” (or “awakening”) for status purposes but otherwise diluted the criteria sufficiently in some sort of jujutsu-type move to avoid being labeled hypocrites since this putative event often seems not to alter the individual who attains it. This probably explains why every Neo-Advaita-style guru always ends up being a sex-cult leader: “Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ” (Matt. 23:10).
It should also be remembered that the OGs approached this differently from us. Bernadette Roberts attained a certain kind of “awakening” but lived an incognito lifestyle for twenty-plus years _before_ even writing about it; additionally, she only wrote after she reached the endish of the journey (at least as he describes it). Imagine being told you can become “enlightened,” but you can’t blog, podcast, write, etc. about it and are restricted to being “just another dude/dudette.”
Even Tilopa was told to act like a “crazy person” (my words) so that no one would know he was “enlightened.” Nāropā was horribly abused in the most servile sense. Muḥammad (ﷺ) spent his (ﷺ) whole life bowing and praying to God (ﷻ). Jesus (عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ) died a criminal’s death. A lot of the Mahasiddhas took low- or outcaste occupations in order to avoid status. If we bring in Ibn ʿArabī (رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُ) and Kierkegaard, we have their respective “people of blame” (malāmiyya) and “knights of faith,” both of whom are incognito, nondistinctive groups of people.
“Zhuangzi said, To know the Way is easy; to keep from speaking about it is hard. To know and not to speak—this gets you to the Heavenly part. To know and to speak—this gets you to the human part. Men in the old days looked out for the Heavenly, not the human” (The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, trans. Burton Watson, Translations from the Asian Classics [New York: Columbia University Press, 2013], 281).
I like this perspective as a corrective. I also have mixed feelings about it! While I'm not in love with the rebrand of "arahant," I think the PD folks did a great job of publicizing the fact that there's a lot more to meditation than milquetoast mindfulness, and that the deep waters are reachable by anyone who has enthusiasm and curiosity. They helped me get that message, and I am thankful to them for that. If nobody talked about the truly mind-boggling and extremely worthy things that can happen within a few years of serious practice, then nobody would take it up. IMO, a healthy middleground is to write about the experiences, but also be realistic about what they are and what they can do, and to suggest that the real long-term aspirations should be based in service and relation, not just mind-blowing experiences. I am attempting this, and I welcome feedback.
One thing to keep in mind about flawed people who write about their contemplative experiences are that you don't know the counterfactual. Sure, [x spiritual writer] might seem very flawed — but did you meet them before their contemplative practice? They might have been much worse! It's not easy to be confident that they weren't changed for the better!
I can't help but note that the Zhuangzhi quote basically glosses as, "Alas, in the good old days, people would live the contemplative life, rather than rave about how cool the Way is in public." Even in 400BC they were talking about how they didn't dilute the tradition with advertising in the Good Old Days, which leads me to believe that this dynamic has always been going on, and is likely inevitable.
Well, not too long before Zhuangzhi they were only writing on oracle bones, and I think you were only allowed to do so to ask the gods for pretty circumscribed divinatory info, so maybe they weren’t bragging about the Way *in writing* at least.
This is what I noticed about straying too far along the “eastern” path: I felt like my ego was growing massive. Not so much erasing it, as blowing it up so large I couldn’t see the edge of it and then feeling like I ought not bother looking.
For a while I went back and forth between Christian Mysticism and Hinduism, because Hinduism kept seeing to blow my ego up, and Christian mysticism eventually started to feel like it was just thinking about suffering for ever, bear the cross and all that.
I’ve ended up in camp Catholicism after numerous attempts of hearing them say some practice was mandatory/forbidden, and thinking “that sounds crazy”, but then going along with their rules and feeling better.
What has started to happen is that, “bearing the cross” has worked out so much better for me than attempting to look the other way, that I’ve come to accept, ok, maybe that really is the way to be aligned with reality itself. Accept voluntary suffering as the price of being, and focus not on trying to cognitively disappear it, but trying to endure it excellently.
I do think there is a cure for narcissism, and that’s consistently believing you’re a sinner and cannot possibly redeem yourself on your own. Observing these strict rules and seeing them as key to maintaining my relationship with the divine. Performing regular examinations of conscience and acts of confession. I agree that the more plastic my mind becomes, the bigger the risk of buying into my own nonsense.
That seems like the main differentiating factor between Christian mysticism and eastern contemplative traditions, and to me that isn’t a small deal.
Didn’t Buddha also advocate a very ascetic lifestyle?
I would guess what this comes down to is priorities. What’s really more important to you? Erasing your ego? Pulling up the weeds? Being at peace? Living excellently despite the weeds? Giving as much love to others as possible? Teaching others?
If your mind is plastic enough, I would you can live in whatever “top level narrative” you want. The question would then be, what do you put there, if anything? I imagine that if one isn’t conscious of what they put there, that _something_ lives there.
I thought Sasha wrote some piece where Buddha admonished some student for having sex at all - that’s what I meant by ascetic, though maybe I’m using the term wrong.
> You start by pulling up the big weeds, then you move onto the medium weeds, and then the really tiny weeds. And if you think you’ve got all the tiny weeds, it’s probably because there’s a big weed that grew behind you, and you don’t see it yet.
What if the weeds are people?
If there’s no universal compass that defines ultimate meaning, ultimate morality, then by what justification do we rip aspects of our personality out? What about the aspects doing the ripping?
This is re: attempts at reaching perfection in behavior.
What’s the basis for assessing perfection? Like, actually, in the moment, how do we assess good or bad behavior in ourselves? Behavior doesn’t just leap out of the ether, fully formed.
In my experience, behavior seems to be animated by desires. Desires for safety, for recognition, for connection, for certain states or sensations, and so on.
To “uproot” a “bad” behavior means we no longer even want to perform the behavior. We have destroyed that impure desire.
I find gardening metaphors are kind of insidious. From the perspective of the plants we name weeds, gardens are warzones. It’s applying an implicitly dualistic view.
Our desires are human desires. At some point, I realized I was regularly identifying with particular desires, and from that position I was constantly casting out or trying to destroy the impure desires that seemed to necessarily result in bad behavior. I was attacking my own humanity.
This is the perspective of most renunciative religions, like Christianity or certain Buddhist vehicles. This desire for purification or perfection. It gets jumbled up with desires for other people’s well being.
Sure! Presenting you can instantly rip out your negative impulses is bad, and the self-destructive attitude can be counterproductive. (Although not always, sometimes a bit of despair over one's condition can be useful...)
I took the gardening metaphor as a nice depiction of the humble, gradual, workmanlike process of trying to be a better person in the world, bit by bit. YMMV
What a great read. Just want to put in a plug for the 12 Steps of recovery from whatever is dragging us away from truth, freedom, love and beauty. I love the Steps because they cover the waking up, the cleaning up, the surrender to a Higher Power, prayer and meditation. The accompanying Traditions in the fellowships anticipate the bs that's likely to occur in groups and the Concepts of service mean there is no way of getting too much power. As a path and a method its pretty good.
This is a great reflection on the complexities of spiritual awakening and the challenges teachers face in maintaining moral integrity. It’s a crucial reminder that awakening doesn’t automatically equate to ethical perfection, and unchecked power or admiration can lead to harmful behavior. Your point about the dangers of spiritual bypassing, where individuals avoid facing their own shadows, is especially important. It highlights the need for continual self-awareness and accountability, even for those who are deeply advanced in their spiritual journey.
“Sometimes, it turns out that really gifted spiritual teachers are narcissists. Not necessarily the murder-y kind of narcissist, just your garden variety narcissist who doesn’t receive emotions-level feedback about the fact that other people matter. Apparently, you can have a crystal-clear insight into your psychology, but still fail to notice what’s not there, EG, empathy.”
I wonder about this…. I think we can experience a sort of perceptual union with the external world … like your head can experientially “drop away”, but it does not follow that this sort of perceptual shift will also result in a heart opening… and so a narcissist could be opened at the mind level , experiencing an emotionally dry “non-dual” orientation towards life … without any sort of emotional resonance towards that unity … and maybe only once the heart opens doe the narcissistic parts begin to subside…
I guess to me this seems like dangerous territory to be in, and also unfulfilling.. leading to the potentiality of addiction and the temptation to commit self-serving acts at the expense of others - to fill that energetic void in the body. In terms of mind openings … it seems like there’s a a sort of power that comes with that territory that needs to be couched in an emotional maturity to be lived from responsibly, without which the sacredness of all life may be overlooked! I can imagine how this sort of posture towards the world would be morally unhinged or ungrounded. The heart component feels like the bread and butter of spiritual growth, and the perceptual shifts that come with opening up at the heart level seem like a byproduct of healing, I wonder if these metaphysical shifts in identity and perception are maybe something not to be pursued in and of themselves, but something that just happens as a consequence of emotional healing… curious what others think … this has been my feeling after doing dry insight meditation.. and realizing I was putting the cart before the horse … a lot more to learn …..
This is probably an oversimplification, but if awakening is filling the God-shaped hole in your mind, maybe narcissism is having a God-shaped hole in your actions. Maybe just like it seems you can't fill the God-shaped hole in your actions and have the God-shaped hole in your mind filled, you have to actively work on it, the same applies in the other direction: filling the God-shaped hole in your mind won't fill the one in your actions. Of course both are linked but they're not the same.
Great read. This is one of the many reasons why gurus/spiritual leaders are almost always problematic ~ and best avoided.
Anyone who puts themselves on a pedestal (or allows others to put them there) is getting some serious ego gratification out of it. Not to mention all the rock star like temptations that accompany such an elevated position as the person in front.
A very dangerous line to tread even for those who aren’t inherently narcissistic by nature.
So much truth in what you say in this article and I appreciate how well written it is. I feel like we have digested a lot of the same teachings. One thing I want to say is that ethics are integral to depth both in meditative life and with connection to others. A teacher that is rooted in ethics always prioritizes awakening and the freedom from suffering with regard to students. And when there is sexual desire present this too can be brought into awareness and used as a tool for awakening. The confusion occurs in teaching when the freedom you feel as a fruit of the practice meets a newly inflated unexamined ego. It is inevitable that temptation will arise and that these temptations increase with notoriety as you say but if the practice has truly touched the teacher deep enough I believe this transgression becomes an impossibility. Some students fall in love with their dharma teachers because they associate their spiritual awakening and freedom with that teacher. The teacher can often feel this and the proper thing to do is to continually point them back to their own experience for their examination never touching or flirting with them. They eventually will see that their desire is within themselves and not in the objects or people in the world and what a profound and freeing insight that is to have.
Any thoughts on Ram Dass and Maharaj-ji? The former is my favourite teacher, and firmly in the 'I'm not a guru I'm a self-aware neurotic who says it well' camp. The latter is regarded by his followers, including RD, as not merely an enlightened person but a human manifestation of the divine, a 20th century Jesus with the miracle stories to match. Then there are the accusations against him. The trouble here is that if you're a divine avatar, you *have* to be morally perfect; screw up even one iota and it invalidates you and everything you're about completely. Not only that, it makes your disciples look bad, because even if they admit to their own imperfections they're in the position of having to vouch for *your* perfection. Something that always makes me uncomfortable with RD, because much as I love him, he and his guru come as a package.
Interestingly, Maharaj-ji wasn't one of the self-promotion-style gurus at all; he even told RD not to speak about him. He'd let people come to him rather than going to them, and was known for telling his disciples to go away a lot. But he'd also let them rub his feet. What hype there was around him seems to have come entirely from his Indian and American followers who related their encounters with him and told dozens of miracle stories. A complicated picture.
Great post. This is a reason I'm suspicious of traditions that claim that ultimate ignorance is the *only* root of our problems. Self-cultivation is hard and gradual.
1. High-profile mentors like life coaches, meditation gurus, or even dominatrixes can abuse power undetected, especially when their problematic behaviors are rewarded or normalized. Detecting mistreatment becomes challenging when you're manipulated or others justify questionable actions.
These influential "educators" may have good intentions and believe they're helping. However, their unwavering certainty bolstered by loyal followers often leaves no room for discussing potential abuse. The "rockstar" status they achieve can caters to their excessive confidence in their infallibility and ability to understand others.
2. When I see people discussing abuse or bad actors, I often see a portrayal of perpetrators as these malicious beings or monsters. This dichotomy between "good" and "evil" hinders proper detection and accountability. By painting abusers in such an extreme light, we inadvertently create a resistance that makes it challenging for people to recognize their own harmful or problematic behaviors. Most people do not see themselves as fundamentally bad or evil.
I don't think spiritual bypassing is given nearly enough air time, and when it is, it's as a one-off event that happened to that weird guy. Everyone bypasses, regularly. When you have a practice perspective that essentially recommends disengaging from the content of your experience, you're set up to bypass. I don't think it's a Bad Thing; it's just A Thing that we should expect to happen until we're wise enough to know better. The more we expect it, the more intimate we can get with its mechanics and the quicker we can lift up the blinders and be here sans trickery.
Cosigned! There is no perfectly solid boundary between "using meditation to change your reactions to your problems, or redefining them as non-problems" and "using meditation to ignore your real problems."
This is a great frame work! Thank you.
Occam’s razor says the Pragmatic Dharma folks retained the title “spiritual enlightenment” (or “awakening”) for status purposes but otherwise diluted the criteria sufficiently in some sort of jujutsu-type move to avoid being labeled hypocrites since this putative event often seems not to alter the individual who attains it. This probably explains why every Neo-Advaita-style guru always ends up being a sex-cult leader: “Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ” (Matt. 23:10).
It should also be remembered that the OGs approached this differently from us. Bernadette Roberts attained a certain kind of “awakening” but lived an incognito lifestyle for twenty-plus years _before_ even writing about it; additionally, she only wrote after she reached the endish of the journey (at least as he describes it). Imagine being told you can become “enlightened,” but you can’t blog, podcast, write, etc. about it and are restricted to being “just another dude/dudette.”
Even Tilopa was told to act like a “crazy person” (my words) so that no one would know he was “enlightened.” Nāropā was horribly abused in the most servile sense. Muḥammad (ﷺ) spent his (ﷺ) whole life bowing and praying to God (ﷻ). Jesus (عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ) died a criminal’s death. A lot of the Mahasiddhas took low- or outcaste occupations in order to avoid status. If we bring in Ibn ʿArabī (رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُ) and Kierkegaard, we have their respective “people of blame” (malāmiyya) and “knights of faith,” both of whom are incognito, nondistinctive groups of people.
“Zhuangzi said, To know the Way is easy; to keep from speaking about it is hard. To know and not to speak—this gets you to the Heavenly part. To know and to speak—this gets you to the human part. Men in the old days looked out for the Heavenly, not the human” (The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, trans. Burton Watson, Translations from the Asian Classics [New York: Columbia University Press, 2013], 281).
I like this perspective as a corrective. I also have mixed feelings about it! While I'm not in love with the rebrand of "arahant," I think the PD folks did a great job of publicizing the fact that there's a lot more to meditation than milquetoast mindfulness, and that the deep waters are reachable by anyone who has enthusiasm and curiosity. They helped me get that message, and I am thankful to them for that. If nobody talked about the truly mind-boggling and extremely worthy things that can happen within a few years of serious practice, then nobody would take it up. IMO, a healthy middleground is to write about the experiences, but also be realistic about what they are and what they can do, and to suggest that the real long-term aspirations should be based in service and relation, not just mind-blowing experiences. I am attempting this, and I welcome feedback.
One thing to keep in mind about flawed people who write about their contemplative experiences are that you don't know the counterfactual. Sure, [x spiritual writer] might seem very flawed — but did you meet them before their contemplative practice? They might have been much worse! It's not easy to be confident that they weren't changed for the better!
I can't help but note that the Zhuangzhi quote basically glosses as, "Alas, in the good old days, people would live the contemplative life, rather than rave about how cool the Way is in public." Even in 400BC they were talking about how they didn't dilute the tradition with advertising in the Good Old Days, which leads me to believe that this dynamic has always been going on, and is likely inevitable.
Well, not too long before Zhuangzhi they were only writing on oracle bones, and I think you were only allowed to do so to ask the gods for pretty circumscribed divinatory info, so maybe they weren’t bragging about the Way *in writing* at least.
Deeply insightful. Further praise seems like a bad idea, all of a sudden.
This is what I noticed about straying too far along the “eastern” path: I felt like my ego was growing massive. Not so much erasing it, as blowing it up so large I couldn’t see the edge of it and then feeling like I ought not bother looking.
For a while I went back and forth between Christian Mysticism and Hinduism, because Hinduism kept seeing to blow my ego up, and Christian mysticism eventually started to feel like it was just thinking about suffering for ever, bear the cross and all that.
I’ve ended up in camp Catholicism after numerous attempts of hearing them say some practice was mandatory/forbidden, and thinking “that sounds crazy”, but then going along with their rules and feeling better.
What has started to happen is that, “bearing the cross” has worked out so much better for me than attempting to look the other way, that I’ve come to accept, ok, maybe that really is the way to be aligned with reality itself. Accept voluntary suffering as the price of being, and focus not on trying to cognitively disappear it, but trying to endure it excellently.
I do think there is a cure for narcissism, and that’s consistently believing you’re a sinner and cannot possibly redeem yourself on your own. Observing these strict rules and seeing them as key to maintaining my relationship with the divine. Performing regular examinations of conscience and acts of confession. I agree that the more plastic my mind becomes, the bigger the risk of buying into my own nonsense.
That seems like the main differentiating factor between Christian mysticism and eastern contemplative traditions, and to me that isn’t a small deal.
Hash tag not all Buddhisms but sure!
Didn’t Buddha also advocate a very ascetic lifestyle?
I would guess what this comes down to is priorities. What’s really more important to you? Erasing your ego? Pulling up the weeds? Being at peace? Living excellently despite the weeds? Giving as much love to others as possible? Teaching others?
If your mind is plastic enough, I would you can live in whatever “top level narrative” you want. The question would then be, what do you put there, if anything? I imagine that if one isn’t conscious of what they put there, that _something_ lives there.
Not making a choice doesn’t mean a choice doesn’t get made.
+1 everything else you said, too
I thought Sasha wrote some piece where Buddha admonished some student for having sex at all - that’s what I meant by ascetic, though maybe I’m using the term wrong.
> You start by pulling up the big weeds, then you move onto the medium weeds, and then the really tiny weeds. And if you think you’ve got all the tiny weeds, it’s probably because there’s a big weed that grew behind you, and you don’t see it yet.
What if the weeds are people?
If there’s no universal compass that defines ultimate meaning, ultimate morality, then by what justification do we rip aspects of our personality out? What about the aspects doing the ripping?
I have no idea what this comment means
Sorry about that! Great article, by the way.
> What if the weeds are people?
This is re: attempts at reaching perfection in behavior.
What’s the basis for assessing perfection? Like, actually, in the moment, how do we assess good or bad behavior in ourselves? Behavior doesn’t just leap out of the ether, fully formed.
In my experience, behavior seems to be animated by desires. Desires for safety, for recognition, for connection, for certain states or sensations, and so on.
To “uproot” a “bad” behavior means we no longer even want to perform the behavior. We have destroyed that impure desire.
I find gardening metaphors are kind of insidious. From the perspective of the plants we name weeds, gardens are warzones. It’s applying an implicitly dualistic view.
Our desires are human desires. At some point, I realized I was regularly identifying with particular desires, and from that position I was constantly casting out or trying to destroy the impure desires that seemed to necessarily result in bad behavior. I was attacking my own humanity.
This is the perspective of most renunciative religions, like Christianity or certain Buddhist vehicles. This desire for purification or perfection. It gets jumbled up with desires for other people’s well being.
Sure! Presenting you can instantly rip out your negative impulses is bad, and the self-destructive attitude can be counterproductive. (Although not always, sometimes a bit of despair over one's condition can be useful...)
I took the gardening metaphor as a nice depiction of the humble, gradual, workmanlike process of trying to be a better person in the world, bit by bit. YMMV
What a great read. Just want to put in a plug for the 12 Steps of recovery from whatever is dragging us away from truth, freedom, love and beauty. I love the Steps because they cover the waking up, the cleaning up, the surrender to a Higher Power, prayer and meditation. The accompanying Traditions in the fellowships anticipate the bs that's likely to occur in groups and the Concepts of service mean there is no way of getting too much power. As a path and a method its pretty good.
This is a great reflection on the complexities of spiritual awakening and the challenges teachers face in maintaining moral integrity. It’s a crucial reminder that awakening doesn’t automatically equate to ethical perfection, and unchecked power or admiration can lead to harmful behavior. Your point about the dangers of spiritual bypassing, where individuals avoid facing their own shadows, is especially important. It highlights the need for continual self-awareness and accountability, even for those who are deeply advanced in their spiritual journey.
“Sometimes, it turns out that really gifted spiritual teachers are narcissists. Not necessarily the murder-y kind of narcissist, just your garden variety narcissist who doesn’t receive emotions-level feedback about the fact that other people matter. Apparently, you can have a crystal-clear insight into your psychology, but still fail to notice what’s not there, EG, empathy.”
I wonder about this…. I think we can experience a sort of perceptual union with the external world … like your head can experientially “drop away”, but it does not follow that this sort of perceptual shift will also result in a heart opening… and so a narcissist could be opened at the mind level , experiencing an emotionally dry “non-dual” orientation towards life … without any sort of emotional resonance towards that unity … and maybe only once the heart opens doe the narcissistic parts begin to subside…
I guess to me this seems like dangerous territory to be in, and also unfulfilling.. leading to the potentiality of addiction and the temptation to commit self-serving acts at the expense of others - to fill that energetic void in the body. In terms of mind openings … it seems like there’s a a sort of power that comes with that territory that needs to be couched in an emotional maturity to be lived from responsibly, without which the sacredness of all life may be overlooked! I can imagine how this sort of posture towards the world would be morally unhinged or ungrounded. The heart component feels like the bread and butter of spiritual growth, and the perceptual shifts that come with opening up at the heart level seem like a byproduct of healing, I wonder if these metaphysical shifts in identity and perception are maybe something not to be pursued in and of themselves, but something that just happens as a consequence of emotional healing… curious what others think … this has been my feeling after doing dry insight meditation.. and realizing I was putting the cart before the horse … a lot more to learn …..
This is probably an oversimplification, but if awakening is filling the God-shaped hole in your mind, maybe narcissism is having a God-shaped hole in your actions. Maybe just like it seems you can't fill the God-shaped hole in your actions and have the God-shaped hole in your mind filled, you have to actively work on it, the same applies in the other direction: filling the God-shaped hole in your mind won't fill the one in your actions. Of course both are linked but they're not the same.
Great read. This is one of the many reasons why gurus/spiritual leaders are almost always problematic ~ and best avoided.
Anyone who puts themselves on a pedestal (or allows others to put them there) is getting some serious ego gratification out of it. Not to mention all the rock star like temptations that accompany such an elevated position as the person in front.
A very dangerous line to tread even for those who aren’t inherently narcissistic by nature.
So much truth in what you say in this article and I appreciate how well written it is. I feel like we have digested a lot of the same teachings. One thing I want to say is that ethics are integral to depth both in meditative life and with connection to others. A teacher that is rooted in ethics always prioritizes awakening and the freedom from suffering with regard to students. And when there is sexual desire present this too can be brought into awareness and used as a tool for awakening. The confusion occurs in teaching when the freedom you feel as a fruit of the practice meets a newly inflated unexamined ego. It is inevitable that temptation will arise and that these temptations increase with notoriety as you say but if the practice has truly touched the teacher deep enough I believe this transgression becomes an impossibility. Some students fall in love with their dharma teachers because they associate their spiritual awakening and freedom with that teacher. The teacher can often feel this and the proper thing to do is to continually point them back to their own experience for their examination never touching or flirting with them. They eventually will see that their desire is within themselves and not in the objects or people in the world and what a profound and freeing insight that is to have.
Any thoughts on Ram Dass and Maharaj-ji? The former is my favourite teacher, and firmly in the 'I'm not a guru I'm a self-aware neurotic who says it well' camp. The latter is regarded by his followers, including RD, as not merely an enlightened person but a human manifestation of the divine, a 20th century Jesus with the miracle stories to match. Then there are the accusations against him. The trouble here is that if you're a divine avatar, you *have* to be morally perfect; screw up even one iota and it invalidates you and everything you're about completely. Not only that, it makes your disciples look bad, because even if they admit to their own imperfections they're in the position of having to vouch for *your* perfection. Something that always makes me uncomfortable with RD, because much as I love him, he and his guru come as a package.
Interestingly, Maharaj-ji wasn't one of the self-promotion-style gurus at all; he even told RD not to speak about him. He'd let people come to him rather than going to them, and was known for telling his disciples to go away a lot. But he'd also let them rub his feet. What hype there was around him seems to have come entirely from his Indian and American followers who related their encounters with him and told dozens of miracle stories. A complicated picture.
Great post. This is a reason I'm suspicious of traditions that claim that ultimate ignorance is the *only* root of our problems. Self-cultivation is hard and gradual.
1. High-profile mentors like life coaches, meditation gurus, or even dominatrixes can abuse power undetected, especially when their problematic behaviors are rewarded or normalized. Detecting mistreatment becomes challenging when you're manipulated or others justify questionable actions.
These influential "educators" may have good intentions and believe they're helping. However, their unwavering certainty bolstered by loyal followers often leaves no room for discussing potential abuse. The "rockstar" status they achieve can caters to their excessive confidence in their infallibility and ability to understand others.
2. When I see people discussing abuse or bad actors, I often see a portrayal of perpetrators as these malicious beings or monsters. This dichotomy between "good" and "evil" hinders proper detection and accountability. By painting abusers in such an extreme light, we inadvertently create a resistance that makes it challenging for people to recognize their own harmful or problematic behaviors. Most people do not see themselves as fundamentally bad or evil.
For you Dune/Stilgar lovers out there:
“The Mahdi is too humble to say he is the Mahdi”
“Even more reason to know that He is!”
Like that with perfectly imperfect guru’s as well.