There are profound esoteric symbols and metaphors. I don’t share the secular biases

alan kazlev Says: May 5th, 2007 at 7:48 pm Hi everyone, yes, I read Geoff Falk’s chapter and was singularily unimpressed. Just to be sure he hasn’t added anything of value, i checked the page again (still seems to be the same page, unless minor words here and there).

To begin with, I will say that I respect Geoff a lot, even where I disagree with him (and I do disagree with him a lot!). Sure he writes with perhaps a bit too much emotion, which makes it easy to dismiss his claims e.g. regarding KW, but that emotionalism comes from his own experience of abuse at the hands of guru cultism (Yogananda’s Self Realisation Fellowship). It is probably no different to that of many other ex-devotees (although there are ex-devotees who can write without getting emotional, and so they can present their message a lot better). And the fact that I criticise Geoff here doesn’t negate the fact that I think it’s a very good thing that he is exposing the abusive behaviour of a number of gurus.

Nevertheless, in my opinion not everything Geoff says is useful. Because he has (perhaps justifiably) a chip on his shoulder regarding abuse, he unfortunately jumps to the assumption that all gurus are fakes and abusers. The logic in other words is If One Apple is bad, therefore All Apples are bad

He will therefore approach the subject of any guru, any guru, from the perspective of - this person is a fake, deluded, ego inflation, whatever, even before he has read anything about them. Now, some bias is unavoidable, i am as biased as the next person, but when bias gets to this level it becomes impossible to see any other perspective.

Why do I then recommend Falk re Wilber criticism? Well, just look at the time and trouble he has taken to study Wilber’s teachings, to look at the organisation, to trace promotional statements to their original source, and so on. His chapter on Wilber is the longest in his Stripping the Gurus book, and he has in addition written a second ebook solely devoted to Wilber. In addition, much of his blog is dedicated to attacking KW and his organisation. It seems clear to me that Geoff’s crusade began when Wilber did a hatchet job on David Bohm, who Geoff greatly admires.

I haven’t read Ken’s original essay on this, but Geoff’s analysis here makes me think it is probably similar to Wilber’s attacks on any other rival philosophy or scientist - e.g. his recent ad hominem attack on Ervin Laszlo in Integral Spirituality, his attacks on the CIIS and on eco-feminist and eco-spiritual academics there (beginning, I think, in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; Michel Bauwens in one of his essays also comments on KW’s strange attitude to the CIIS), his total misunderstanding of and dismissal of Darwinian evolutionary science in his A Brief History of Everything and later statements (his arguments have long been refuted, they are the same ones the creationists use). In every case, a dismissive attitude based on Wilber’s own lack of understanding and dislike of the academic or field of scholarship in question.

Yet what I find ironic is that whilst Geoff so eloquently demolishes Wilber’s case against Bohm, showing how Ken completely misunderstands and misinterprets David Bohm, he then builds, out of a similar ignorance and prejudice, a similar such case against Sri Aurobindo. (Geoff’s original attack on Sri Aurobindo and The Mother was in his famous “Norman Einstein” chapter on Wilber in STG. Wilber btw never once mentioned The Mother, as Rod Hemsell has pointed out in his own essay criticising Ken’s understanding of Sri Aurobindo).

Compare Falk on Wilber with Falk on Aurobindo. Falk on Wilber cites extensive references, including Wilber’s own words and philosophy, the words of his followers, references to blogs, critics, etc etc etc. He even said in one blog post he is going to buy a copy of Integral Spirituality (much as he doesn’t want to), in order to better criticise Wilber’s work, hopefully in a published work of his own.

Falk on Aurobindo. Not one reference to Sri Aurobindo’s primary works. Only one reference to a work containing some of his letters (Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother), in which statements are taken out of context and given a fundamentalistic meaning they were never intended to have. Some of the citations he gives also appear unreliable. Here is one that I thought was pretty strange:

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

I have never heard of anything in Sri Aurobindo’s own statements regarding his past lives. In fact he specifically refused to discuss these subjects, perhaps aware of the very sensationalism that these sort of statements would generate.

The above quote is from Roy Posner’s website. Now, Roy is a really great guy, and he intellectually summarises the Integral Yoga teachings so that it isn’t necessary to read the whole Life Divine etc. I have some of his material on my website. But sometimes he also cites unreliable material. This stuff about past lives seem to come originally from a hagiography on The Mother by a certain “Karmayogi”. This contains unreliable information - i.e. what Karmayogi says in some places is contradicted by what The Mother says in the Agenda. I don’t want to question Karmayogi’s devotion or sincerity. But the fact that Geoff had to trawl the internet to find the most unreliable and sensationalist information, in order to ridicule or dismiss the subject of his essay, does not augur well for good scholarship. I have been told that in his chapter on Vivekananda, Geoff relies on sources such as Christian Missionary polemical material.

On the other hand, some material regarding occult intervention and so on is from devotees who are citing the Agenda and so on. The Mother in fact often talks about that sort of stuff, including her occult training with Max Theon and his wife. Similarly Sri Aurobindo sometimes discusses these subjects too, for example in his letters (my favourite is his long letter on The Intermediate Zone, which I use as a starting point for my critique on the paradox of the “enlightened” abusive guru).

But really, occultism is something that has been around for millennia. If you accept that consciousness is not bound by the physical brain, there is no reason why it cannot intervene on the subtle levels. Especially a highly developed or highly trained yogic consciousness, or someone with talent in this area. Stories of yogic siddhis, miraculous healings by saints, etc, these sort of things are universal in all cultures. Even on this forum there is a recent thread on miracles. In the West there is the hermetic tradition, you have in the 19th and 20th century the Golden Dawn, Crowley, Wicca, etc. Or (outside the Western occult tradition) New Thought, Positive Thinking, A Course in Miracles, and that very simplistic and perhaps for that reason very popular New Age video The Secret (that’s another one that Ken - with his associate Julian Walker - delighted in attacking, even though he himself has made somewhat similar hyped claims regarding TM etc, Jim Andrews has written a good essay on this). And can science explain something as ubiquitous as the placebo effect? Still less out of body and near death experiences, (including NDE’s where the person remembers discussions and events (e.g. attempts to revive them) that occurred when they were “flatlined”, hence there was no brain activity at that time).

Anyway I don’t want to go into occultism, metaphysics, siddhis, influence on subtle (and even gross) realities, etc here. I’m writing a book on the subject, to be called Integral Metaphysics. But sure I can see how it might be considered pretty strange by anyone who does not acknowledge the authenticity of these realities. Once at a social gathering many many years ago I started talking to a guy about metaphysics and he got pretty uncomfortable, probably thought he was talking to a lunatic!

Andy, yes I also find Sri Aurobindo’s books are much too verbose (although others disagree); and I agree with you that he would probably have had a much greater influence if he had been more precise. Or written in the light and easy style of his letters. When I started reading Synthesis of Yoga I was struck by how repetitious it was. I mean, the individual paragraphs and pages are beautiful, inspiring, incredibly evocative mystical writing. But to read the book from cover to cover - impossible!

You also say there are many very gentle, non-abusive souls who are not at all realized, so being non-abusive by itself is hardly evidence of anything spiritual.
Absolutely. Absolutely! But i mean a teacher who is not only exemplary in their life and deeds, but also give out inspirational, profound material on the nature of existence, the meaning of life, all those guru-ish things.

There are so many reports of gurus having a beautiful message, and their devotees, and even strangers, having profound transpersonal experiences when around them; but then in their daily life and treatment of their devotees these teachers fall down totally. It is that paradox - wisdom and what seems to be authentic transpersonal experience, mixed with feet of clay - that made me sympathetic to the hypothesis of the Intermediate Zone, when it was first suggested to me by an ex-devotee of Adi Da.

The right students, in the right situation, may reveal that teacher to be very powerful in a non-abusive way. The wrong students in the wrong situation may bring out abusiveness.
That’s an interesting argument. But how to explain that individuals like Ramana Maharshi for example has never been referred to as abusive in any situation (not even by lazy students or weak devotees). This is why I take such a strong stand here. Otherwise it is all too easy for an egotistic or narcissistic teacher to justify their position - a la Adi Da and Ken Wilber with the “three cards trick"

alan kazlev Says: May 5th, 2007 at 8:02 pm Ray said: Using ‘abuse’ as a standard smacks of moral judgement.
Ray, read some of the things on the What Enlightenment!!? blog by ex- Cohen devotees and then tell me about moral judgement

On the WW II material: This is delusional stuff. It also unfortunately feeds into the paranoid, metaphysical landscape of WW2, with Hitler trying to martial metaphysical forces. This is magical thinking, the stuff of competing shamans engaged in spiritual battle, each invoking supernatural forces.

Certainly, in the linear secular worldview criticised Jean Gebser (mental perspectival), concepts of spiritual battle and magical thinking indicate an outmoded and archaic or a delusional way of thinking. Wilber seems to hold this view too. I don’t share these secular biases. In fact, much of esotericism in general rests on this conception of metaphysical forces; especially Lurianic, Theonist, Anthroposophical, and Corbinist (Henry Corbin’s Jungian-style Sufism) conceptions of cosmic redemption involving a sort of cosmogenic drama.

I aren’t saying what Trevor Ravenscroft said, or what The Mother said, should be believed as literal historical and exoteric truths. These are profound esoteric symbols and metaphors. Jung also spoke of the power of archetypes; it’s pretty similar to what Steiner said about spiritual hierarchies, but using a different worldview. Generally people choose a particular worldview, and judge everything according to biases resulting from that (I don’t claim to be any different)