Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and "Life Coaches"
Posted by: helpme2times ()
Date: July 27, 2008 11:07PM

This person in particular scares me, all the creepy items on her resume.

[[url=http://www.satoricoaching.com/credentialsmodalities.html]Satori Coaching - Jane Hardy[/url]]

Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and Eckhart Tolle Legit??
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: July 27, 2008 11:55PM

Cultic Milieu--further pondering

Another author refers to 'oppositional subcultures' as part of the cultic milieu.

[www.amazon.com]

Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization (Paperback)
by Jeffrey Kaplan (Author

In 1972--a period of social upheaval much like today--sociologist Colin Campbell posited a cultic milieu: An underground region where true seekers test hidden, forgotten, and forbidden knowledge. Ideas and allegiances within the milieu change as individuals move between loosely organized groups, but the larger milieu persists in opposition to the dominant culture. Jeffrey Kaplan and Helene Loow find Campbell's theory especially useful in coming to grips with the varied oppositional groups of today"

It may mean that there is a subgroup and a very important one in society where persons will go for precisely those advisors who ARE unlicensed, and because such persons present themselves as offering emancipatory alternatives to a mainstream culture whose healing resources and personnel are deemed inadequate, or as agents of oppression.

Critical thinking and fact checking are deemed part of the oppressive, unloving mainstream culture.

The tragedy is many leaders who claim to offer themselves as frontier heroes and heroines, as liberating us from mainstream culture, are all too often secretly using the worst and most oppressive tools of maintream culture (marketing techniques designed to induce craving and herd mentality, hiring attorneys to craft disclaimer/waiver forms in which subjects sign away their rights as citizens to sue for damages if harmed), and the bandits are bandits because they use their power without any of the best and wisest features of mainstream culture that enable us to think consciously about power itself and identify whether it is being used benevolently and wisely (ethos of care, accountability for the great power one wields in relation to those who trust to your claims as a healer).

These false liberators covertly use the toxic weapons of mainstream culture to steal from those whom they persuade to abandon the finest mainstream cultural tools of critical thinking and fact checking.

This oppositional attitude and cultic milieu shows up throughout history. It existed during the Roman empire, and in his satires the poet Juvenal complains about the foriegn and un Roman religious practices the high born ladies of the time brought into their households. Christianity was to be one of these 'oppositional alternatives'

Here is an example from the 16th century: The Countess of Sussex.

'She was a deeply unconventional woman' writes David Starkey, 'married to a husband who was conventional in very way--religiously, socially, politically.

'Religion provided the first grounds for disagreement between the couple. The Countess...shared Catherine Parr's advanced religious opinions.

'Under Edward VI, Protestantism became conventional. So the unconventional Countess moved on to sorcery, which in 1552 led to her imprisonment in the Tower.' (From David Starkey: Elizabeth:The Struggle For the Throne, 2000)

The late 19th Century was another such time, a time when table tapping, spiritualism, theosophy, and various New Religious movements of the time flourished--a cultic mileu.

Its when someone claims to be a frontier hero, insists that we abandon the protections of mainstream society (signing waiver/disclaimer forms), yet that person is covertly retaining lawyers, real estate advisors and accountants in the background to make sure their assets are well cared for by mainstream specialists whose acumen is unimpaired...that we need to watch out.

Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and so-called "Life Coaches"
Posted by: The Anticult ()
Date: July 28, 2008 12:51AM

Its truly unbelievable how Byron Katie International is franchising out all of this stuff to anyone with a pulse.
Its interesting how many so-called Life Coaches will just grab onto whatever is popular.
One has to wonder how the business end of it works, do they just pay Byron Katie upfront for all that "training" or do they have to pay a franchise fee too?

When Byron Katie says..."the Work is freely given"...that is really amusing. Or when one of those who promote her say, everything you need to know about The Work is free...its truly absurd.
It is literally like saying the worms at the end of the fish-hook are free for the fishes. The 4 Questions part of the work, is really just the worm on the end of the hook, its the bait.
Then once that kicks in, people move into more "coaching" and the 9-Day LGAT School, 100 Day Training, then they get all these techniques used on them, and then they start handing over $50,000.

But this idea of online or over the phone "Life Coaching" with a stranger is beyond silly. The joke about Life Coaching when it started, it is that the only business expense is a phone. So you have thousands of people running those things out of their basement, to try to make some money on the side.
And there are also more sophisticated Life Coaches, who are advanced at subtle sales methods, and are able to hook people into all sorts of things, some even have complex trick contracts.
Bottom line, online and over the phone Life Coaches, including Byron Katie Coaches, are a waste of money at best, and can even be quite harmful.



Quote
helpme2times
CultCity brought forth the idea of "coaching", so I decided to get an idea as to how many folks might be utilizing BK's work in the context of "life coaching".

It's STAGGERING how many people are doing this. Imo these people are trying to make an easy buck off of the vulnerable. They may or may not be conscious of this. They may have new age-ly convinced themselves that they can actually help people AND "manifest" $$.
...

Here's a PARTIAL list of people I found who both do "the work of Byron Katie" and "coach":

Life Coach Mary
Patty Alessi
Maggie Carter
Global NLP
The Work For Breakfast
Clear Life Solutions - Carol Skolnick
Heather Ambler
The Work Coach
Coaching For Life - Sandra Harris
Vier Vragen
Satori Coaching - Jane Hardy
It's Not About Your Stuff - Ariane Benefit
Nurture Through Nature - Jen Deraspe
Insightful Way - William Cael and Lily Alexander
Inner Wisdom Revealed - Kim Antonson
Enlightening Lives - Dawn Rockwell
Clarity Coaching
Institute for Life Coach Training
Discover the Treasure That is You - Theresa Andersen
The Work with Rosie
Holistic Counselling - Marilyne McPaul
My Reunion Coach - Christi Bender
Proactive Change
Authetic Promotion - Molly Gordon
Paul Welcharts
Mary Collins Osborne
Meadow DeVor
New Life Focus - Leslie Gail
The Voice For Love - DavidPaul Doyle
Karen Caplan
Paradigm Shifts Coaching - Patrick Ravindra Walsh
4 Gateway Coaching
Realing Self

Again, this is but a PARTIAL list.

Note: they want you to PAY them to do "the work" on some level with you. In many cases they are getting what a licensed therapist would get, and more. So much for how "free" the work is.

Re: Byron Katie (the Work) "Certified Facilitators"
Posted by: helpme2times ()
Date: July 28, 2008 03:37AM

If you are thinking of doing sessions with a BKI (Byron Katie International) certified facilitator of "The Work" and have found your way here, I urge you to read the posts preceding this one before getting involved in the work.

This is a list of Byron Katie's "certified facilitators" as of today's date:

Susan Balsam, Texas
Stephanie Bell, Washington
Diane Bradshaw, Arizona
Celia Chapman, Florida
Ashik Lynch, Colorado
Lee Alden, Vermont
Paula Brittain, Colorado
Caroline Malmgren Davis, California
Roxann Burroughs, California (that's Bryon Katie's daughter)
Nina Lynch, Colorado and New York
Molly Gordon, Washington
Jean Klemm, West Virginia
Maggie Carter, Colorado
Barbara Cavanagh, Texas
Donna Cobean, West Virginia
Mabel Fernandez, Florida
Valli Waugh, Auckland, New Zealand
Maj Sorensen, Copenhagen, DK
Tom Compton, Oregon
Anil Coumar, Washington
Mariana den Hollander, Costa Rica
Vered Peled, Israel
Jorg Herrmann, Portugal
Shaun de Warren, England
Kathryn Dixon, Utah
Celeste Gabriele, Washington
Mary Margaret Kendrick, South Carolina
Peter van Hecke, The Netherlands
Ulrich Buhrle, Germany
Ralf Giesen, Germany
Lee Greenbaum, New Hampshire
Thom Herman, Massachusetts
Pam Fisher, California and Utah
Colette Grunbaum, Switzerland
Yolanda Zumaeta, Florida
Maaike Hoijtink, The Netherlands
Adam Lewis, Colorado
Melony Malouf, Colorado
Marylynn Grimes, New York
Diane Derek, California
Raffael Mallepell, Switzerland
Sandra Manfre, Texas
Michael McCarty, West Virginia
Tal Nesiah-Cohen, Israel
Phyllis Linn, Oregon
Sally Pamberger, Australia
Alex Rush, California
Mary Collins Osborne, Ireland
Lea Ann Paradise, Minnesota
Arick Peled, Israel
Deborah Coates, Kentucky
Marie Odiel van Rhijn, Portugal
Kathleen Sepeda, Colorado
Michele Penner, Orego
Lesley Pollitt, Vermont
Charlotte Price, Italy
Laura Saavedra, Puerto Rico
Mollie Shea, Oregon
Carol Skolnick, California
Janine Sanford, Texas
Patricia Wickes, California
Eduardo Zambrano, California
Lise Jorgensen, Denmark
Vidya Anderson, Pennsylvania
Walter Pedersen, California
Elizabeth Lavine, Arizona
Carina Benninga, The Netherlands
Dale Steele, North Carolina
Sarah Gallwey, California
Kathy Melby, Utah
Willie Deiman, The Netherlands
Rosie Stave, Australia
Sue Lee, Malaysia
Gramya Alonso-Barth, New Zealand

Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and "Life Coaches"
Posted by: JB ()
Date: July 28, 2008 08:37AM

Oh, my god! Forgive me, but I've been alternately laughing and cringing after reading the list of Jane Hardy's credentials. If she actually did go through all that training she must be the most jargon filled discombobulated new age sucker in history. I'm guessing she made at least some of it up. Either way, I'm wondering: "who falls for that". I mean it's one thing to say you are trained in "x" discipline". But to add "y" "z" and all the other letters in the alphabet to your resume? That's casting an extremely wide net (or spinning a very large, sticky web).

On a side note, I noticed she's also trained in EFT. I recently read a bit about EFT after finding out that an ex-girlfriend (a wonderful but gullible woman who fell for Lifespring years ago) was now a certified EFT therapist. It looks to me like EFT has got some self hypnosis stuff in it's free literature with the usual come-on to get more course material for a fee. Beyond that, I don't know much about it. Has anyone else heard about it?

Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and Eckhart Tolle Legit??
Posted by: Guruphobiac ()
Date: July 28, 2008 11:58AM

Interesting to note that the large majority of BK facilitators are women. Just scanning the list I figure it's 70%. Typical of most newage (rhymes with sewage) modalities.

As for Janey Hardy, she proudly lists her extensive training in $cientology as part of her fringe education. Yikes!

Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and EFT, TFT, Jane Hardy
Posted by: The Anticult ()
Date: July 28, 2008 12:57PM

EFT is literally hypnosis. (also TFT)

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)
QUOTE:
"Emotional Freedom Techniques is the creation of Gary Craig, an energy healer who would fit well in any New Age borough. Gary is always smiling and happy because he has found the cause and cure for almost everything and he really wants to help you. He loves you and cares for you. How do I know? He says so on his website"
[www.skepdic.com]

Of course, they say that the Tapping is healing your aura, and all that stuff. But come on, its basically the placebo effect, and also self-hypnosis, hypnosis, etc. Self-suggestion.
Tapping Schmapping.

They basically do something like...you have a headache, so I TAP TAP TAP on you, and then give your the Suggestion your headache is going away. So that is a type of placebo response.
If it doesn't work, your energy is BLOCKED and you NEED MORE TREATMENTS.
$weet, bring those EFT Tapping $$ home to momma.

But the "certified" EFT thing, is the exact same Franchise Network Marketing Business model as Byron Katie. Sign people up, charge them a fortune to do "Method X", and then they go out and try to do EFT over the phone out of their basement.
I tell ya, there are a million people all doing anything they can make a buck at over the internet, over the phone.
They just add the Byron Katie system, in with Scientology, EFT, Landmark, or whatever else.
20 years ago it would have been Channeling too.

Jane Hardy and all these "Life Coaches" or Satori Coaches, or whatever they are selling, are all just entrepreneurs, I bet some of them make some serious cash. And they can run it out of a closet office with a phone. No expenses, and you get to write-off that part of your home mortgage as a business expense.
Jane Hardy looks like a real piece of The Work. She is a Scientologist, and a Landmarkian, and a Byron Katie Facilitator, Sedona, EFT, and about 20 other things.
She is also bringing in the LoA from The Secret. They just add in whatever is trendy this season.

She also seems to believe she can Influence you using her covert mysterious Psychic Powers.
__________________________________________________________
[www.satoricoaching.com]
Gerald O'Donnell's Remote Viewing Course
Gerald O'Donnell's Remote Influencing Course

Landmark Education's Forum
Landmark Education's Advanced Course
Landmark Education's Introduction to Leadership Program
Landmark Education's Communication Power to Create Course
Dr. T. Arden Compton's Emotional Freedom Techniques Workshop
David Hawkins M.D., Ph.D. Sedona Seminar in “Relativism vs. Reality”
L. Ron Hubbard's Extension Course "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health"
L. Ron Hubbard's Extension Course "Science of Survival: Prediction of Human Behavior"
L. Ron Hubbard's Extension Course "Self Analysis"
L. Ron Hubbard's Extension Course "Advanced Procedures and Axioms"
L. Ron Hubbard's Extension Course "Handbook for Preclears"
L. Ron Hubbard's Extension Course "Scientology: A History of Man"
L. Ron Hubbard's Extension Course "Scientology 8-80: The Discovery and Increase of Life Energy in the Genus Homo Sapiens"
L. Ron Hubbard's Extension Course "Scientology 8-8008"
L. Ron Hubbard's Extension Course "The Creation of Human Ability"
L. Ron Hubbard's Extension Course "Dianetics 55!: The Complete Manual of Human Communication"
L. Ron Hubbard's Extension Course "Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought"

The Work of Byron Katie

These four questions and a turnaround will transform your life. Take a thought and ask yourself:
1. "Is it true?"
2. "Can you absolutely know that it is true?"
3. "How do you react when you think that thought?"
4. "Who would you be without that thought?"
Then turn it around for an incredible transformation.

The Law of Attraction

There is a universal force that we are able to tap into. Instead of striving for things to go our way, we can create our own lives attracting circumstances, experiences and relationships that we want to have. By using the Law of Attraction, life becomes our own, and we are enabled to live in the flow of abundance instead of scarcity. Gerald O'Donnell's courses in Remove Viewing and Remote Influencing teach us to become the master of our matrix. Applying these techniques as well as Colin Tipping's Radical Manifestion technology and the ideas of Esther and Jerry Hicks enable us to become the creators of our lives.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2008 01:01PM by The Anticult.

Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle are hiding their pasts
Posted by: The Anticult ()
Date: July 28, 2008 01:32PM

also, notice how much more clever Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle are than all these folks?
BK and ET both know listing all your past affiliations, seminars, and guru's and former cults, etc, carries a lot of baggage.

So they went and suppressed all of their past affiliations, and just pretended that a cockroach and a park bench done it.
Very clever indeed.

Who was the first big western type Guru who created a false past?

Werner Erhard tried to do it, but it caught up with him.
L Ron Hubbard fabricated his past history...
but all those lies caught up with them later.
So its smarter to just not say anything, make up stories that can't be disproven, and even go so far as to say you are a Savant and forget most of your past, in case you get busted for some of the BS about the past. (like Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle).

There has to be some early western pseudo-mystery guru's who did this in the 50's...
It is a very clever idea.

Re: Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle are hiding their pasts
Posted by: helpme2times ()
Date: July 28, 2008 08:15PM

Quote
The Anticult
also, notice how much more clever Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle are than all these folks?
BK and ET both know listing all your past affiliations, seminars, and guru's and former cults, etc, carries a lot of baggage.

So they went and suppressed all of their past affiliations, and just pretended that a cockroach and a park bench done it.
Very clever indeed.
Actually in Tolle's case, he supposedly spent the first 29 years of his life in a lot of psychological pain, and one night, I think while he was in bed, he said he thought something like, “I cannot stand myself any longer.” But supposedly he then thought, “who is the me I cannot stand?” and voila he woke up to his "real" self. Lots of hanging out on park benches allegedly followed that.

Re: Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle are hiding their pasts
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: July 28, 2008 09:55PM

In answer to Anticult's question: in the 1950s there was a fake guru named Lobsang Rampa. He got away with it because back then there was little information about Tibet or Tibetan Buddhism. His material looks very quaint today. Rampa was actually the pen name of a British author, who wrote a wildly popular book, 'Opening The Third Eye'.

"The Third Eye, published in 1956 and authored by Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, purported to be Rampa’s autobiographical tale of his study and mastery of Tibetan Buddhism.

Rampa claimed he had been born into a wealthy Tibetan family and had studied in Lhasa to become a lama. He had then undergone an operation to open up the “third eye” in the middle of his forehead. This operation had bestowed upon him amazing psychic powers.
"

"Naturally, this description of an ancient Tibetan operation that could provide psychic powers raised a few eyebrows, especially among serious scholars of Tibetan culture. Keen to debunk what they were sure was a fraud, a group of scholars living in Britain hired a detective, Clifford Burgess, to determine the validity of Rampa’s tale.

What Burgess discovered was that Rampa had never been to Tibet, nor had he ever had any operation done to his forehead. Instead Rampa was actually Cyril Henry Hoskins, born in Devon, England, and son of a plumber named Joseph Henry Hopkins.

"Cyril, it turned out, had always been interested in the study of the occult. He had studied it as much as he could in his spare time. But one day he had taken his interest a step further. He grew a beard, shaved his head, and began to refer to himself as “Dr. Kuan-suo.”

"Burgess confronted Cyril with what he had learned, but Cyril had a ready explanation at hand. He said that while he may have been born Cyril Henry Hoskins, he had become Tuesday Lobsang Rampa because his body had been taken over by Rampa’s spirit. Therefore, according to him, all the information in his book was true.

"Despite having been proven to be a phony—a plumber’s son posing as a Tibetan monk— a market still existed for Rampa’s writings. Evidently quite a few people were willing to believe his tale about having been possessed by the spirit of a Tibetan monk. So he continued on with his career as Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, authoring twelve more books before his death in 1981. However, none of them sold as well as The Third Eye.
"

[www.museumofhoaxes.com]

The question is why so many were and remained willing to believe?

Agehananda Bharati wrote an article trying to puzzle this out.

Bharati goes on to describe a book and a following of that book that both exemplfy the 'cultic milieu.' Bharati seems unsympathetic, but I suspect that part of the mute appeal of the book and others like it was that in the 1950s, many old mysteries (and dreadful diseases such as TB) were being seemingly conquered by the advances of science. At the same time the same scientific triumphs that had given us penicillin and streptomycin and polio vaccine (an uncle of mine was nearly disabled by childhood polio and my grandfather died in 1940 from TB, so I know what this meant)....

These same triumphs of science had also brought in the new terror of nuclear weapons. Those of us old enough will remember how as school children we were taught to duck under our desks 'in the event of a nuclear attack.'

And there was special anxiety in Britain where Rampa's book was first published, because throughout the mid 1940s and all through the 1950s Britain was haunted by a series of treason trials--presons who had worked in atomic research facilities and military installations had been caught selling or transmitting secrets to the Soviets. Science had dispelled the old sense of wonder and had ushed in new anxieties. So, a Jungian might suspect that a deeply frightened population would, unconsciously seek compensation--and consolation by rewarding a new teller of tales who could assure them that benevolent magic and wonders still existed somewhere. About 15 years later, Carlos Castaneda did the same thing--and sadly turned out not to be a harmless man, either.)

Bharati writes with the asperity of a Sanskrit scholar, sadhu, and as one who had worked with and studied with professors of Buddhism, including Tibetan lamas and geshes.

"The Tibetan Lama turned out to be Mr. Hoskins, an Irish ex-plumber, who sat it out in various libraries in London, reading science fiction, pseudo-orientalia including, no doubt, Blavatsky and concocting this amazing book. These findings were published in the British press, and booksellers were warned about the matter, so as not to be involved in fraud.

'Now one would have thought that the disclosures about Rampa-Hoskins and Khasa-Hyde Park might impede, if not stop, the production.

Incredulously, Bharati wrote, 'Far from it. Most of the millions who kept buying the book and its follow-ups did not know about the facts — they simply hadn't read the statements in the British press.

' Quite a few, however, did read or hear about these disclosures, and remained followers, no less ardent of the Lama; to wit, two Canadians who called me long distance from Toronto one night, saying: "Sir, you are a wicked person. You say Lama Lobsang is an Irish plumber; well he may be in the body of an Irish plumber, but the soul of a Tibetan Lama lives in him."

"Well, then I can't win," I admitted, and they hung up.

'Reactions to this incredible situation are variegated and, to the cultural anthropologist concerned with ideological change, highly fascinating; and they are far more complex than the Canadians' effusions.

'Less than a year ago — over a decade after the Publication of The Third Eye, a colleague of mine, a historian with perfectly respectable academic credentials, visited and told me about the wisdom of Rampa, with glowing eyes.

'When I told him the facts in straight, brief words, he was visibly shaken, but said something like: okay, maybe the man is not Tibetan, but he grasps the truths of Buddhism. He does nothing of the sort, I said and proved — but I did not convince the man. He (that historian friend of mine) had gone into Rolfing, Macrodier, Yin and Yang, Hatha Yoga, and a half dozen of other things eminently available in America.

'To him, the question of genuineness or spuriousness did not pose any problem, and I have a strong hunch that this blurring of the possible distinctness between the genuine and the spurious is very much part of the total pattern of eclectic attraction to the esoteric.

(In other words, in a world where rationality and wonder are increasingly split, perhaps people crave some way to make thought and wonder compatible and love stories that seem to resolve this vexed problem for them--C. The problem comes when persons with this legitimate yearning walk right into situations that are bandits lairs)

Bharti wrote of Hoskins, author of the Rampa books:

'Hoskins moved to Toronto and founded an ashram-like place with a medium-large following up to date. This is in the way of things on the lunatic fringe: but astoundingly, he wrote sequels of at least three more books after the exposure of The Third Eye, starting with Doctor in Chunking. All of these have been out in paperback for years, and they are visible on all sorts of shelves — bookstores of course, drugstores, airports, even Greyhound bus stations.

'Since publishers are no charitable organizations, this means that the book sell, in great numbers. Saying what I say about Lobsang Rampa, and mutatis mutandis about most other pseudo-Asian cults in the Western world, I have, of course, made many more enemies than friends. People simply cannot stand the idea that there is no abominable snowman, that there is no white brotherhood somewhere in the Himalayas, and that people do not fly through the air except in planes; least of all can they suffer the idea that religious specialists in Tibet are scholars, tough theologians, and down-to-earth monastic leaders, with lots of hard political know-how, and with the measure of cruelty and strategy that seems to be common to all ecclesiastic leader who also have secular powers; and this, of course, was very much the case in Tibet before the Chinese takeover.

But matters go deeper than that. We have to investigate the extreme dislike of hard theological, scriptural, commentatorial argument, a dislike that characterizes all followers of the neo-Hindu-Buddhist, and the pseudo-Asian movements of a millennial type...."

[www.serendipity.li] (Fictional Tibet and the Persistence of Rampa-ism)

Other Cases



Early 20th Century--Gurdjieff. (James Webb, in his book The Harmonic Circle, meticulously traced the sources of all of Gurdy's mysterious Fourth Way stuff and made a convincing case that none of it was unique and that Gurdy himself may well have been a spy for the Imperial Russian secret service...he was denied a residential visa by the British authorities, very likely because his activities as a Russian spy working against British interests had earned him a dossier in the M 15 office. Webb was upper class and was able to read those old files)

BTW in books by Richard Francis Burton (esp Sindh and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus--published in 1851 and with modern and affordable reprints), Burton was a genius at languages and lived as a local among the Sindhis in what is now Pakistan. He later travelled by camel caravan to Medina and Mecca impersonating a Pathan Sufi. Burton successfully passed as a local, spent much time with a Sufi order, did at least one 40 day retreat, and reported being given a mursid's diploma. He spoke Hindi, Persian, Arabic, Sindhi and some Baluch, and in a quest for rare manuscripts, carefully searched libararies at mosques, madrassas and private houses. Burton learned a lot of about magic, partly to perfect his own cover and gain the trust of those he travelled with.

He described how tribes people told the future from a sheeps shoulder bone, described the mandal or magic mirror, but significantly never at any point mentions the enneagram. He did mention very great deal about local methods of alchemy, and managed to win the trust of varoius clerks with inside knowledge, because in the Sindh book Burton listed various tricks used to counterfeit coinage, make bogus documents look convincingly aged, and ways to counterfeit even seals for offical documents, but...nothing at all about the enneagram.

Burton learned all he could to provide a convincing cover for himself. He also, in his chapter on Sufism mentioned 'Jalal al Din' (Rumi) off handedly as just one among many great Sufi adepts, and didnt single him out or put him on a pedestal, as is done today.)

Late 19th Century: Mme Blavatsky (read Washington's Madame Blavatsky's Baboon--gives a great overview of cultic milieu in the 19th and early 20th centuries, BTW)

Bringing it back to the present day:

One fairly recent story of a magical cure was that of Andrew Cohen.

Cohen's first legitimation narrative was based on his somehow being magically and instantly enlightened in 1986 or so by an Indian guru named HWL Poonja. After a mere two weeks, Poonja reportedly sent Cohen forth to teach and start a revolution amongst the young.'

It even convinced and amazed Cohen's mother, Luna Tarlo, who said her son looked utterly different afterward--suddendly endowed with charisma, all hesitation gone. (Tarlo, The Mother of God). Significantly, according to accounts both by Tarlo and other early students, AC's charisma was combined with a brutally confrontational manner with students.

This perhaps began to make Cohen's Indian guru look bad. Eventually the two enlightened men quarrelled. Cohen dropped Poonja from his legitimation narrative and later took up or was taken up by Ken Wilber.

Poonja collected a following from Cohen's disenchanted students and reportedly, from orphaned followers of Rajneesh/Poonja and was given credit for enlightening Gangaji.

These days Cohen's magazine has since become a house-organ for Wilber's integral twaddle. In an interview Cohen mentioned an interest in spiritual seeking before he went to india and that he'd been interesting and yoga and martial arts.

If he pursued yet other options before or after his time with Poonja, this has not been mentioned, by Cohen, his mother, or anyone else.

Cohen does offer 11 day intensives, though.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2008 10:14PM by corboy.

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