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hoax108
Perhaps the Eastern meditative and spiritual practices that we find so "mystical" here in the West are more a product of the environment and social system than of the spirit!

Wow, I think you really have something there. That idea is kinda blowing my mind...

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Koestler wrote,w hen discussing his impressions of Advaita as taught by Krishna Menon, who taught a particularly clear cut form of it:

''...that is precisely the trouble: Eastern philosophy cannot be de-mythologized and conceptualized. Every attempt to distill its essence produces an unpalatable acid; and every attempt to translate it into the verbal concepts and catagories of Western language leads to logical monstrosities.

"It is one thing to say that the world is a dream; it is another (matter) to 'prove' logically that because the dreaming mind in sleep is unaffected by bodily pain (which is blatantly untrue)*, therefore the body does not exist. **

'It is one thing to say that the world is a veil of illusions around an ultimate reality of which, in exceptional moments mortal minds may gain some intuition; it is another thing to 'prove' that two thoughts cannot be simultaneous, therefore memory does not exist, and so forth. The genuine mystic is entitled to state experiences and affirm contradictions which contradict logic, science, and common sense. But he is not entitled to borrow words which have a precise meaning in science or philosophy, and roll them around in a game of (Alice in) Wonderland croquet with mobile hoops...Eastern thought (unlike Western) does not crystalize into concepts, its catagories remain fluid, its grammar elusive, and its reasoning indifferent to contradiction. The Eastern mystic was under no restraint, the realms (between human and divine) were never divided, symbolic and literal meaning never separated, mysticism and reasoning never parted ways. *** Koestler, The Lotus and the Robot pp 49 and 51)

Corboy comments:

I heard a man give tell of how he had a dream in which he had dropped a grand piano on his foot and felt agonizing pain in his big toe.

He told us he awoke, and his big toe was still in pain. It turned out that while asleep, this man's body suffered a biochemical shift that produced the onset of a first attack of gout and enough uric acid had crystallized in this gentleman's big toe that this, while he slept, began to produce the classic symptoms of gout. Thus, the pain began in his toe while he was asleep, and these physical sensations were translated by his sleeping brain into a set of symbolic equivalents---images of dropping a grand piano on his toe. So, we may be unable to think while asleep, but still be affected by sensations in our bodies."

**'therefore the body does not exist'---this kind of rationalization can be used to support a strategy of splitting off and disowning experiences too painful for us to face at a conscious level. And if enough people share this sort of spiritual bypass mentality, this kind of bypassing/sidestepping will get social validation, rather than being recognized as a sign that one is not doing all one can to face one's situation--and get help in more fully facing one's situation. For further examination of this process of spiriutally rationalized bypass, look for a couple of books by psychoanalyst and Zen teacher Barry Magid, MD. I owe the term spiritual bypass to Dr Magid. C)

***
"The Eastern mystic was under no restraint, the realms (between human and divine) were never divided, symbolic and literal meaning never separated.."

PAGING ANTICULT

Corboy ponders, 'symbolic and literal meaning (in Eastern thought) never separated'--could it be, that when untrained Westerners are introduced to Eastern nondualism (even when presented by The New Brahmins via LGATs or spontenously enlightened people who sit onstage and smile wearing western clothes, that merely being introduced to this will trigger trance and confusion in many audiences? For one characteristic of hypnotic trance is that one regresses and loses capacity to distinguish between symbolic and literal meaning.

It is intriguing that Carl Jung reflected on his impressions of India after a visit made in the late 1930s and entitled that essay 'The Dreamlike World of
India.'

In dreams we code our thoughts into symbolic form.

To supplement Koestler's comments, here is something from an Austrian who became a monk in India and who had been trained in both Western and Advaita philosophy--Agehananda Bharati:

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Agehananda Bharati, an Austrian born scholar who later become both a Hindu monk and a professor of philosophy and anthropology actually studied nondualism, both personally, for he had experienced what he termed 'zero-states' and interviewed many others who had experienced these states.

He had also studied the genuine advaita philosophies, and did this in the 1940s and 1950s, before watered down varieties became commercialized and peddled to mass audiences.

Bharati loved Hinduism but he also stated clearly that there were potential pitfalls.

One, in this interview in 1981, Bharati spok with an interviewer, designated here as U:

U: What about "eastern mysticism" - do you find that offensive?

Bharati: Quite offensive. I call that "drifting into eastern wisdom chatter." When people stop thinking in grammatical terms, you get into this eastern mysticism drivel. I find that very difficult to stomach. I don’t think eastern mysticism is very attractive. But I think it’s of psycho-experimental importance, it’s one of those things that you can do to skim confidently over your problems, which I find very helpful.

*(Note his comment 'it is one of thoes things you can do to skim confidentialy over your problems, which I find very helpful')

U: Your term "psycho-experimental" that’s also a very western term.

Bharati: Yes, it’s an etic (scholar’s) term. It’s a difference between the statement of the texts and my critique of them.

U: You are an initiate of an advaitic school, but you don’t really care for advaitic philosophy, as you have said. Why?

Bharati: I think, first of all, it doesn’t really generate a sense of humor. It’s also very dry, and the trouble is, the great pieces of Indian art and music were composed in spite of monism, not because of it. But monism is a good, solid guideline for the kind of meditation I enjoy. But I think it’s drudgery, I think it’s very bad philosophy.

U: In what way?

**Bharati: For me, philosophy is to solve problems. In monism, there are no problems. The problems (that remain in monism) are of a linguistic sort.

U: Could you give us a one-sentence or one paragraph summary of your own summum bonum?

Bharati: My own personal philosophy? I think that the modern mind has to work on several levels. At one time I called it syncretistic parallelism. By that I mean that you live the religious life by whatever form of meditation, which is purely private and not communicable, and you lead whatever social and active life you choose. The two don’t meet, even schedule-wise, because you do them at different times of the day.

' I enjoy the meditation, but I think if you try to make a bridge between the meditation and the philosophy, you’re in great trouble, because it bars you from doing good philosophy. '

Not only does this bar you from doing good philosophy, it also bars you from creating good social policy based on systematic data gathering, interviewing, and analysis of social systems made possible by something not possible in Advaita, but something offered by Western analytical philosophies---objectivity. The ability to assess a social situation by observing it from an outside perspective, rather than as an inmate of that same system.

[forum.culteducation.com]

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Though I had read about it in books, the din and noise and profanity in Indian places of worship came as a shock. I found that there is more peace to be had in Manhattan than in any Indian town or village, temple or shrine. (Koestler was there in the late 1950s!)

'If the temple was an historic monument, the atmosphere was that of Brighton Pier; if it was a modest local shrine, the scene was that of a family picnic. The voices were shrill and unrestrained, children would caper all over the place with mothers and sisters yelling after them; obeisance was shown to the idol, but no reverence, the feeling of sanctity was completely absence. I began to suspect that I had never encountered a people as uncontemplative as this nation of Yogis. (Koestler, The Lotus and the Robot, page 17)

In a subsection 'The Perils of Distraction' Koestler commented

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'I must return once more to the noisy profanity of the temples.

'The absence of privacy (in India) shich characterizes life in the family, makes itself even more storngly felt in the attitude to religion. In the joint household, a man is rarely alone with his wife; in the temple he is never alone with his God. If he wants to be alone with his god, hemust become a hermit and retire to the Himalayas. Hence the prominent part the cave dwelling hermits play in Indian lore.

'The West however misunderstood their significance by regarding them as typical representatives of a nation that values quiet meditation above everything. In reality, they are the exceptions, the rebels against the debasement of religion who take to the wilderness because Indian society is inimical to teh contemplative life...

It is interesting to note what Gandhi had to say on the subject. In 1924, after one of the periodic outbursts of religious hostilities, he wrote in an article:

"Hindus and Muslims prate about no compulsion in religion. What is it but compulsion if Hindus will kill a Muslim for slaughtering a cow? SImilarly, what is it but compulsion if Muslims seek to prevent by force Hindus from playing music before mosques? Virtue lies in being absorbed in ones prayers in the presence of din and noise."

It is a revealing passage. Logically, Gandhi ought to have admonished his Hindu brethren to abstain from making 'a din and noise' in front of Moslem places of worship; instead he admonished the Moslems to tolerate (LOVE WHAT IS? C)what they must regard not only as a nuisance but as a desecration.

'The justificiation for this curiosu attitude is found in (Gandhi's)next sentence, as a Hindu, the notion of hushed silence in the House of God, common to Christian and Moslem, was alient to him: "Virtue consists in being absorbed in one's prayers in the presence of din and noise."

Gandhi was expressing a basic principle of Hindu education in its emphasis on concentration, on teh quasi Yogic power of shutting oneself off from any outside distraction. By an effort of concentration (Koestler has Gandhi imply) everybody ought to be able to live in his own Himalayan Cave in the midst of the turbulent household.

It looks as if these extraordinary powers had been ascribed to the individual as a compensation for the denial of privacy.

'It was all right for Gandhi, who could withdraw into himself in the midst of a crowd, and it was probably all right in a traditionalist society which discouraged individualistic tendencies.

But to the young University student, the person with artistic or intellectual or religious aspirations, the denial of the right to privacy, and the concommittant demand that he should make up for (the lack of privacy) by 'concentration' means a frightful mental strain.

The Lotus and the Robot, pp 141--142

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'You (Westerners) have developed the head, the head did not keep pace. With us it was the opposite, it was with the development of the heart that we have been concerned in India'. When Vinoba Bhave said this to me, I accepted it as a truism, as most guilt ridden Westerners do.

'The first half of the statement is certainly true (Koestler had the Nazi concentration camps and Stalin's state orchestrated famines in mind, as also the problems of the newly developed nuclear weapons).

'But,' continues Koestler, 'what evidence is there for the second?'

'If 'heart' refers to charity, the Oriental attitude to the sick and the poor is notoriously indifferent, because caste, rank, wealth and health, are per-ordained by the laws of Karma.

'Welfare work in the slums and care of the poor in general was and still is, the monopoly of the Christian missions in Asia. Gandhi's crusade for the Untouchables and Vinoba's crusade for the landless are modern developments under Western influence--Gandhi himself acknowledged that he was inspired by Christianity, Tolstoy, Ruskin and Thoreau.'

The Lotus and the Robot, page 280

(Note: Fine charitable work has been done by the Ramakrishna Order, but its founder, Vivekananda was also Western educated and was part, not of classical Hinduism but of a movement termed Hindu Reform or Hindu Renaissance. C)

The Lotus and the Robot, page 17

At the same time I also suspected that something essential was escaping me, and that I must be mistaken. (Koestler wrote this last set of lines assuming he was in some way failing...he had come to Asia optimistically hoping Asian would have something meaningful and helpful to say about the problems that concerned Post World War II westerners. He realized there was no answer and by the end of the book wrote that he no longer felt he had missed anything.





Next, Koestler interviewed one of the leading figures in the Hindu hierarchy--the Shankaracharya of Kanchi:

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Koestler asked this question: 'Where then, can an individual meditate in silence and enjoy the feeling of being alone with his God?'

His Holiness replied: 'In almost every Hindu home, and in riverside structures, there is a place of daily worship. We can obtain in it the seclusion and silence needed for meditation.'

Koestler then says to the reader:

'It would have been impertinent to contradict the saint by telling him I had visited some of these 'riverside structures' and private shrines in Hindu houses. About the former, the ghats (bathing places) and shrines of Benares for instance, the less said the better; the latter are usually the size of a larder or simply a corner in a bedroom. There would be a small figure of Krishna or Durga with some wilted daisies in front of it, and some oil prints of the Monkey God on the wall.

'But in the average cramped and crowded Indian habitation, that shrine offers no privacy whatsoever. A saint of course, would feel at peace in the midst of any din and noise.

'But,' says Koestler, 'I was concerned with the average person.'

Lotus and the Robot, page 60.

And...remember friends, Koestler was in India in the late 1950s...as was Jeffrey Masson. Electronic gadgets were not yet blaring as they are today, and most transportation was still by animal or on foot...automobiles and motorbikes with their amplified noise were not yet commonplace in India. Yet both Masson and Koestler were troubled by the staggering amount of suffering...and Koestler made additional observations about the whole sale lack of privacy.


Final note: This indifference to the sick and the poor is no longer an oriental monopoly. For the New Brahmins have been teaching a doctrine of misfortune as merely part of 'What Is'--to be passively accepted and bypassed through trance logic, rather than subjected to analysis, cause and effect questioned, and a remedy sought.

In Liberation Theology, there is a stance called hermeneutic of suspicion by which one asks whose self interest and which power structures are preserved or challenged by the assumptions implicit in a text or teaching.

This matter of loving what is, will undermine the very benefits of America covertly valued by the New Brahmins--concentrating wealth, analytical thinking in the hands of an entrepreneurial and power loving few, while turning the multitude into passive acceptors, who remove themselves from participatory democracy...whose existing laws are NOT WHAT IS, but have
been created by participation and can only be maintained by participation.

Do ET and BK vote? Has either one ever done jury duty? Do they participate by paying their taxes?

They benefit from Anglo American law which respects and safeguards property and its orderly transmission and which supports capitalist enterprise.

And gives tax exemption to spiritual enterprise...enabling such enterprises to accumulate wealth much faster than those who must pay their taxes.

All this is not what is. It is made possible by Western analytic philosophy translated into law, into revolutionary thought that created the America that has enabled ET and BK to flourish...by subverting participatory democracy and teaching citizens to renounce clear thought and regress to the sort of trance logic that could never have created the social resources or communications networks that have made ET and BK's commerical success possible.

And...Western Dualistic thought is needed to invest profit--and you can bet BK and ET either know how to do this, or are wise enough to hire people who do this for them.

All this is legal, BTW. But..it is hypocrisy to tell us to heal ourselves by loving what is, while the person teaching this is accumulating social power and influence and making vast profits by retaining the very kinds of thought patterns he or she is claiming are the root of our suffering.

If ET and BK followed their own teachings 100% they would be in a state of mind that makes long range planning, marketing impossible.

Koestler wrote

By an effort of concentration (Koestler has Gandhi imply) everybody ought to be able to live in his own Himalayan Cave in the midst of the turbulent household.

"It looks as if these extraordinary powers (of concentration) had been ascribed to the individual as a compensation for the denial of privacy[/i].

'It was all right for Gandhi, who could withdraw into himself in the midst of a crowd, and it was probably all right in a traditionalist society which discouraged individualistic tendencies. "

But this is another thing that the New Brahmins are doing--they are combining this demand that we shut out and bypass noise, discord, suffering, yet not in service to a clan or traditionalist society that discouraged individualistic tendencies, as happened in the Indian caste system, but combine this splitting off from suffering and discord, with a very aggressive form of individualism, which means one can use these strategies to disown relationship ties according to one's own passing whims and fancies.

This combination of a coping strategy designed for life in a non-democratic clan system with little privacy and in combination with Western individualism and consumerism, and permission to disown the pain of being a citizen in a participatory democracy by ignoring the need to participate by trancing out and denying the reality of citizenship and relationships..

This is something new and very worrisome. And we are damn right to preserve RR.com as a think tank where these implications can be discussed and without troll interferance.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/2008 10:45PM by corboy.

A final note on differences between Indian and Western attitudes about privacy:

If anyone thinks that Koestler's view point is rare or eccentric, Captain Richard Francis Burton made a similar observation in the 1850s, though he expressed it in language much different from Koestler. Burton was a hardy man, an explorer, a career soldier. But even he had this to say--and he said it despite loving India and being far more willing than the average Englishman to acculturate--to the point of learning the languages and going under cover disguished as one of the locals:

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'...we English have a peculiar national quality, which the Indians, with their customary acuteness, soon perceived, and described by an opprobrious name. Observing our solitary habits, that we could not, and would not, sit and talk and sip sherbet and smoke with them, they called us "Jangli"--wild men, fresh caught in the jungle and sent to rule over the land of Hind.


'Certainly nothing suits us less than perpetual society, an utter want of solitude, when one cannot retire into oneself an instant without being asked some puerile question by a companion, or look into a book without a servant peering over one's shoulder, when from the hour you rise to the time you rest, you must ever be talking or listening, you must converse yourself to sleep in a public dormitory and give ear to your companions' snores and mutterings at midnight.

Burton, Richard F: A Personal Narrative of the Pilgrimage from Al-Medinah and Meccah, Volume One, Dover Reprint, first published 1855, the Dover Edition being a reprint of the 1893 memorial edition.

And in his book, The Light at the Center: Context and Pretext of Modern Mysticism, published in 1970, Agehananada Bharati did an anthropological examination of nondual realization and the social roles in India (and the Indiophile West) associated with valuing such experience, questing for it, and the social roles of seeker, experiencer, and guru.

'Once the modern Hindu householder has done his preparatory observances (commitment to a vegetarian diet if he has not done so, abstention from sex--Bharti noted that the only yogis who are women are widows)..and has settled down to asana, the visible parts of his yoga are exhausted, it is these visible "actonic chains" as Marvin Harris would calle dhtem which establish a man (in the recognized social role) as a lay yogi.

By about this time, his family has reserved sufficient time and space for him, to do virtually as he wants. A niche or room in the house is tacitly given over to him, and no one will enter it from then on. It is expected that he will devote ever more time to his meditation, and if this process continues for a number of years, the man will be known to people in his locality as a yogi, a teacher.'

(Bharati The Light at the Center page 163)

This might still be little privacy and quiet by Western standards but is a very great amount by Indian standards.

So...social context is important here. A coping strategy of 'tuning out' through spiritually rationalized bypass of a noisy, suffering social context that one has no personal resources to escape from or remedy, might be
the equivalent of valium, and a means of adaptation--to that particular social context, where people are already very, very related with one another.

But in the West, where it is harder to maintain relationships, and where we are already quit often alienated and need more face to face engagement, rather than suffering from social overload as is the case in India, importing Indian methods of spiritually rationalized disenagement and bypass of suffering might increase our Western forms of narcissism and disengagement/alientation, rather than healing these.

These questions have to be asked. I am not saying dont do yoga, but be prepared to fine tune yoga so that it will actually remedy Western forms of malaise and selfishness---rather than increasing these.

ET and BK have combined western forms of hyper-individualist captialism, with disregard for suffering and by discarding two key features of Western spirituality at its best:

*Love your neighbor as yourself/you are your neighbor's keeper

*The inherant dignity of the ordinary unenlightened human person


For America especially is not a densely populated ancient civilization as India is. America is still socially a frontier, a land of wide open social and physical spaces, where we need help connecting and lending a helping hand, not yet more encouragement to isolate and look out for Number One.

A friend who grew up in farm country said that in her area, if you saw a neighbor's cow in trouble, you climbed under the neighbors fence, checked the animal and then called the farmhouse to alert them. They would do the same for you. Thats the frontier mentality at its best.

Not let the suffering animal lie there, love what is, and fail to phone the neigbhor.

Literally the one respectable way to get some personal space, both in terms of time and physical space, and allowances for introversion is....in the Indian context, to become a yogi, a hermit, first at home and then more radically in some cases, by leaving home and looking for seclusion.

So...in compensation for the lack of privacy and vast suffering in Indian life, a particular kind of spiritual practice and set of mental and emotional escape hatches within that spirituality, seem to have come about--socially and spiritually sanctioned bypassing via 'concentration' that may often have been dissociative, and thus not a strategy that would have led to remedying the misery that led one to split off from it using yoga or nondual word spinning with through logic dissolves all problems into illusions that can be ignored or--loved for 'what is'---rather than being questioned and seen as something to be remedied.

If we had kept loving infections diseases for 'what is', we wouldnt have had immunization strategies, or antibiotics and a lot of us, perhaps including BK and ET would not be alive today.

And....many of us are now alive today to argue the issue and many more, on RR.com



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/2008 11:23PM by corboy.

Corboy,

Fascinating stuff!

It makes me appreciate the fact that I can experience solitude here. I would hate the constant noise and distraction that seems to be the norm in India.

As I was reading these last posts, I was reflecting on my own spiritual journey and some of the things that I have been considering of late.

I think I originally became involved in spiritual life due to feelings that there is something "wrong" with me and I thought that by engaging in certain spiritual practices, I would experience "Divine Intervention" and be "fixed".

These feelings of "wrongness", or worthlessness, I believe made be very susceptible to cult life.

But I have come to learn that joy and peace and feeling good about yourself just do not fall into your lap from above because you are praying and meditating. Further, dissociative practices will usually only serve to exacerbate feelings of worthlessness, of being apart, of not accepting yourself.

Spiritual practice can reveal to you areas in life that you need to work on and ways in which you can take action to become the type of person you feel you would like to be. The key word here is action. We need to act in the world and we need to take action when it comes to dealing with what we perceive are our shortcomings.

I mean, you can pray and meditate all you want to become a more forgiving and generous person, but this will never occur unless you take the action to tell someone you've hurt that you're sorry, or take the action to donate money (or time) to a worthy cause. Prayer might help you get there, but action speaks louder than words.

So Corboy, I agree wholeheartedly with what you say here: "I am not saying dont do yoga, but be prepared to fine tune yoga so that it will actually remedy Western forms of malaise and selfishness---rather than increasing these."

I practice yoga to help me to open up so that I can be a better person to those around me, and deal with my own issues in a practical and positive way. I am grateful that I have the quiet time to be able to do this as well.

And this was a great shortcoming in cult life - how you were personally feeling and interacting with the world was irrelevant and actually dismissed as illusion. All that was stressed was surrendering to and serving the cult leader as this was supposedly the solution to all your problems.

A Long Sunday Rant or Drosh

Dear H108:

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And this was a great shortcoming in cult life - how you were personally feeling and interacting with the world was irrelevant and actually dismissed as illusion.

Friend, the guru who persuaded you and others to follow him or her was covertly not taking that same advice. To market oneself and acquire and retain followers and generate income, one has to interact with the world and NOT dismiss it as irrelevant or as illusion...otherwise how can a guru get the word out to recruit? To market oneself the spiritual entrepreneur/euse has to be very very concerned with the world, and with public opinion....and not dismiss these as irrelevant.

The New Brahmins play a double game. They retain analytical thought and study how we tick, so they can meet our expectations.

But they teach us to ditch analytical thought so that we become unable to analyze them or the social sitaution that empowers them.

They retain methods of thought that enable them to study us and get rich, and obtain US tax deductible status, while conning us into feeling ashamed to think critically and to believe money is dirty or not to worry about it..and give some to the guru.

The New Brahmins pretend to have renounced their stories, but covertly are marketing their stories like mad, using methods of thought that they tell us to give up.

This guarantees they stay Brahmins and the rest of us get fuzzy headed, get poor and lose capacity to function as citizens in a participatory democracy--the same democracy that offers tax deductible status to spiritual projects and enables them to accumulate wealth more rapidly than us peons who still have to pay taxes--and who are gonna have to bail out AIG and Fanny and Freddie Mae.

We are told to 'love what is', even if its our rapist, instead of learning to give a well aimed kick where it counts scream our lungs out.

The New Brahmins are at the top of a power imbalance and profit from it, while conning us into believing that a man made power imbalance 'just is' and must be loved for what is...when in fact, they create these power imbalances and profit from them--and con us into never thinking clearly about power in the first place.

With your interests, you might get some validation from some books written by Barry Magid, the psychoanalyst and Zen teacher. He is the one who talked to us about what he called 'bypass'.

He also mentioned something from another psychoanalyst Philip Bromberg.

Speaking of dissociation and splitting, and how to actually remedy these, Magid said that the solution was not through bypassing the areas of our humanity or other people's humanity that scare us (and though Magid didnt say so, this would also include issues of social justice that make us feel overwhelmed)...instead of dissociating from these and splitting these off,
through rationalizing that they are mere illusion, the remedy is instead...
to increase our own capacity to consciously hold and contain the experiences and situations that arouse our anxiety.

(I want to emphasize that splitting off and dissociating are not always done consciously. In extreme cases this can happen unconscously-- to the point where someone may involuntarily trance out/black out/zone out. When that person learns more and more how to willingly and consciously bear and contain anxiety, these episodes of blacking out will be reduced.)

What is difficult is if, without knowing it, one gets involved with a teacher or group that is part of an entire social scene in which dissociation and splitting off from scary aspects of human and social life are not not only considered a normal and desirable way to cope...but are spiritually rationalized.

'There are no victims' is a tip off that we are in a social scene, or a group within a social scene, that normalizes dissociation and splitting off from pain and unpleasantness, rather than training us to become more and more capable of bearing consciously the human anxiety and awareness of both inner and outer conflict.

Two, it is interesting to see if a group (or for that matter a potential romance or marriage partner or boss) is capable of dealing with misfortune
or can only rationalize it as evidence that someone 'made it happen'.

Once again, I think we need venues like RR.com to serve as both sanctuaries and think tanks.

Because we have a most interesting situation in the First World.

We have what I term a bunch of New Brahmins who are teaching us to use our minds in such a way as to split off and dissociate from the great and pressing issues of being human and of being citizens in participatory democracies that are under severe stress, being taught by these New Brahimins that if we discard and devalue dualistic/analytical thinking, we will have special experiences and be transformed into New Brahmins ourselves.

When what is really happening is that in a social arrangement that makes it possible for Brahmins to exist, there will always be very few slots open for Brahmins, but many, many more slots for peasants who are unable to think dualistically and analytically about the entire social arrangment that puts BK and ET on a stage, and the marketing strategies that lead so many to fill the auditorium and pay for this stuff.

BK and ET are using the very same kinds of dualistic and analytical thinking that they are training the rest of us NOT TO UTILIZE.

You cannot do long range marketing strategies as these two have done, and as gurus such as Maharishi, Rajneesh, Muktananda, Gurumayi, and Sri Sri Shankar and Amma have done and are doing, unless you use the very sorts of analytical, dualistic thought that you train your trustful and cash generating followers to stop utilizing.

These New Brahmins are quite analytical in thier stance toward us, and how to get us to disclose confidential information, how to be vulnerable onstage and submit to questioning, and how to keep paying for stuff.

But we are forbidden to be analytical in relation to the New Brahmins and thier determination to use the very habits of mind that they tell us are the cause of our suffering.

Thier life stories are used to seduce us to listen to them---but we are told our life stories are making us suffer.

And by our being trained to devalue analytical thinking, we dont ever ask

'Why do BK and ET get to tell the same story again and again, yet we are told to give up our story?'

Why does their story have market value and our stories are devalued?

'And what is the social arrangement that made this happen--the forces both within us and outside of us?'

For ET and BK are part of what Journalist John Horgan, in one of his books, termed 'the Enlightenment Industry.'

Its a branch of the entertainment world, yet because its spiritual, they can claim tax deductible status and avoid having to get licensed and legally accountable as psychotherapists must do.

The pleasures of power and none of its many responsibilities.

They get to ask what makes us tick, but we are forbidden to ask what makes them tick...except in protected think tanks such as RR.com.

To repeat:

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For the New Brahmins have been teaching a doctrine of misfortune as merely part of 'What Is'--to be passively accepted and bypassed through trance logic, rather than subjected to analysis, cause and effect questioned, and a remedy sought.

In Liberation Theology, there is a stance called hermeneutic of suspicion by which one asks whose self interest and which power structures are preserved or challenged by the assumptions implicit in a text or teaching.

This matter of loving what is, will undermine the very benefits of America covertly valued by the New Brahmins--concentrating wealth, analytical thinking in the hands of an entrepreneurial and power loving few, while turning the multitude into passive acceptors, who remove themselves from participatory democracy...whose existing laws are NOT WHAT IS, but have
been created by participation and can only be maintained by participation.

Do ET and BK vote? Has either one ever done jury duty? Do they participate by paying their taxes?

They benefit from Anglo American law which respects and safeguards property and its orderly transmission and which supports capitalist enterprise.

And gives tax exemption to spiritual enterprise...enabling such enterprises to accumulate wealth much faster than those who must pay their taxes.

All this is not what is. It is made possible by Western analytic philosophy translated into law, into revolutionary thought that created the America that has enabled ET and BK to flourish...by subverting participatory democracy and teaching citizens to renounce clear thought and regress to the sort of trance logic that could never have created the social resources or communications networks that have made ET and BK's commerical success possible.

And...Western Dualistic thought is needed to invest profit--and you can bet BK and ET either know how to do this, or are wise enough to hire people who do this for them.

All this is legal, BTW. But..it is hypocrisy to tell us to heal ourselves by loving what is, while the person teaching this is accumulating social power and influence and making vast profits by retaining the very kinds of thought patterns he or she is claiming are the root of our suffering.

If ET and BK followed their own teachings 100% they would be in a state of mind incompatible with utlizing the techniques of celebrity networking, publishing, PR and marketing that they both utilize.

My beef with the New Brahmins is they continue to use the same patterns of thought they teach are causing US suffering.

Used by the New Brahmins, analytical and dualistic thought makes possible the marketing that has made them famous and wealthy and influential.

But...they are not telling us this. They make it seem they got rich and worth listening to by abandoning belief in their own story, when it was actually a mighty belief in thier own story and a willingness to use dualistic strategic thought and use American mass marketing (and use copyright law based on analytical thought!!!) that has given them success.

They didnt become desirable and successful by taking their own advice, but by getting people to ditch theri story and have a special experience and become a New Brahmin.

Its marketing ones story that makes you a New Brahmin, and it is having access to the tools of marketing that make it possible--and these are the same tools used to market any product, whether its Chlorox bleach, new brands of body armor, new upgrades of software, and new kinds of automatic weapons.

Its access to and knowledge of marketing, the right social contacts and venture capital that really makes a person one of the New Brahmins--not whether one has had an experience of nondual realization.

If you dont have access to all this, you can have a zillion nondual experiences, but never become a player in the Enlightenment Industry.

Its not just experiences that make you a New Brahmin--its knowing how to market oneself, using forms of thought that are incompatible with nondual realization.

And that, friends, is truly....The Secret.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2008 09:46PM by corboy.

Quote
corboy
And that, friends, is truly....The Secret.

agreed, 100%! Your summary of 'the secret' is much more accurate than the version that has sold for close to half a billion dollars in the past couple of years.

Unfortunately however, the gurus, the hucksters, and the opportunistic vipers will continue to flourish and mutate in our midst...wherever we are. They will read, analyze, and meticulously study all the facts and truths stated on sites such as this, and they will extract the most subtle and discreet bits of truth (many of which are quite profound), and use them in reverse, to run a whole new con on masses that will still be seeking 'truth'. Every time the 'new' re-fried scams are exposed, such as the New Earth, The Secret, The Work etc.., there's always going to be a new con getting ready to run another scam, with a 'new' story to sell the scam with.

You gotta admit, the STORIES utilized by BK and Tolle were really quite slick..raw, shocking, and so unlikely and outrageous that they seemed believable. Their cockroach and park bench stories frickin cleaned house in the self help market! Their fictitious accounts of trauma and epiphany were brilliant..though cheap and transparent. I only hope that the next wave of 'new' wage secrets, keys, principles, doctrines, workshops and seminars to flood the self-help market, will at least come with a definite expiry date, and an especially graphic warning label.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2008 06:40AM by ON2 LF.

as far as hypnosis, it can all get very complicated, but in the end, hypnosis is simply "inward focussed attention".
So any type of storytelling/myth is a form of hypnosis.

All of the old-style hand waving, swinging watches, and the rest of it, is all superstition, and is not needed. What is needed is LANGUAGE and IMAGES.
So that is literally all Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle do to people, and they know exactly what they are doing, as is shown by their specific techniques.
Inducing Confusion is a great instant Induction method, which is then followed by Suggestions.

So on an even more basic level, its just about covert PERSUASION.

Personally, I think the non-dual stuff is similar to the swinging watch in hypnosis, just a distraction.
Byron Katie just uses that "content" of nondualism, as part of her persuasion process.

Also, I think the term "nondual" seems to have been orginated in a satirical way? Who came up with the term nondual? Whatever happened to Oneness?
Using the term Nondual seems to be a bit of an inside joke, as its a negative, saying what it is not.

Personally, I don't think ET or BK cares much about the surface philosophy too much, they just picked what's trendy at present. Notice how Byron Katie has changed her Stories, and methods, over and over again, she kept changing her marketing image to make herself more marketable. (including banning her own former books and creating a more ambiguous public image with less overt Eastern baggage which can sound too weird to many folks.).
Same with Eckhart Tolle.
Old wine, new bottles.

They are really just spiritual snake-oil hustlers...100 years ago they would have been selling Christian Science Mind-Cure stuff, there was HUGE MONEY in that stuff years ago, people were making millions, just like today.
Byron Katie uses all the NLP Tech to sell her Nondualism stuff, but there is no way she believes any of that stuff, clearly to her its just the "content". That is why she has changed it over and over, and why it doesn't make any sense, its supposed to confuse you, then lead to...

$ales of products and services, and large "gifts".
Its just a massive moneymaking business.
They are making millions a month.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2008 12:02PM by The Anticult.

ON2LF wrote:

Must say, its brilliant to utilize unverifiable stories such as epiphany on a park bench or the cockroach.

Why?

Because these tie in to every day situations that scare us.

Corboy ponders:

Many of us fear becoming that person who lives on the park bench. To become homeless is to join the ranks of the living dead.

Folks dont even look you in the eye. Its the most terrifying thing most of us can imagine.

And this invisible prickle of fear lurks as a waking nightmare for most of us. Its a situation many city dwellers see each day. This image of the homeless person on the park bench is tied to fear that we might join that person.

It is an fear tinged image that has already been downloaded onto our C drives.

(How many have had dreams of a homeless person invading their homes?)

So anyone who can tell what purports to be a tale of personal redemption from homelessness has told a story that is all the more powerful because it incorporates something already inside of us--an image inside of us that is linked with fear.

Anyone who can tell a story like that, has our attention.

Ditto for roaches--most of us associate cockroaches with disgust and also possibly, with poverty and social failure. To be human and find yourself lying on the floor, with a roach crawling on you is flesh crawling, because roaches are associated with garbage, with feeding on food that we have rejected and discarded.

So to be on the floor with a roach on you is to have lost much of what we associate with being human. You're not standing up, you're on the floor. Not even on a bed. And you're down on a level with the most loathsome of bugs, in grave danger of of having your own humanity breached and becoming garbage.

In medieval times, they used to leave bodies of executed criminals hanging on gallows, to scare ordinary people into line.

We dont have that now. Today what scares many of us into line, scares us into not questioning society or power structure is the prospect of homelessness and being outside of humanity.

The park bench and the floor with the cockroaches are the new gallows.

So anyone who can take these common and frightening images and link them to a story has tapped right in to a current of silent terror that affects many of us.


ON2LF:

Unfortunately however, the gurus, the hucksters, and the opportunistic vipers will continue to flourish and mutate in our midst...wherever we are. They will read, analyze, and meticulously study all the facts and truths stated on sites such as this, and they will extract the most subtle and discreet bits of truth (many of which are quite profound), and use them in reverse, to run a whole new con on masses that will still be seeking 'truth'.


If anyone comes here, uses information from RR.com to darken people's minds rather than genuinely wake people up to seek out their own unique paths...

Corboy's Curse on any Huckster who Mines Rick Ross's Site to Build More Effective Cults and Rip Offs

May you never have a satisfactory shit, ever again.

May all the tortures of anal fissure, piles, constipation, and pilonidal cyst afflict you.

And even if you sidestep all this by getting a colostomy, may the ultimate Cultmaster's Curse befall you:

Knowing deep down, that you will never be known or loved as an ordinary human being.

And that in your old age, when you are helpless, in a wheelchair, and need others to look after your pee bag and change your Depends, you will risk being fleeced and ripped off by people who are as opportunistic and cold hearted as you are.

(Cue Thunder and Lightning. Lights Dim)

Dear Anticult, thanks for your assessment of eastern philosophies as just one method among many that can, potentially, be used to induce trance.

This induction of confusion seems basic. Ive been approached by street hustlers who would babble a mile a minute, telling a story, bombarding me with too much information. They'd be agitated and I'd find myself getting agitated along with them.

It was a sort of blitz approach designed to throw a person off balance.

Eventually I discovered that anything or anyone that made me feel that way was a signal to AVOID making any decisions about money, and that that kind of confusion is the worst context possible for making an important decision.

I think it is interesting that traditionally those nondual philosophies were meant for advanced students who had a lot of practice developing mental stamina and concentration and who also had made formal commitments to live ethical lives according to their Hindu or Buddhist practice paths.

It is a new and unforseen complication that this stuff is now being peddled at entry level and by entrepreneurs, rather than professional teachers.