Trusting that a guru's teachings are valuable, so valuable that it is worth ignoring harm reports from a guru's former students -- this is no different
from decisions made to buy and hold an investment you have purchased.
You've decided there is no better investment.
The danger is that you've decided to buy and hold stock and also decided you must ignore *any and all reports* that this investment, is losing value and should be cashed out before you lose your shirt.
A fantasy metaphor.
Swartz had better hope his financial advisors are
not as blindly trusting as Sattva of the investments they've made to structure JS investment portfolio.
A wise investment strategy, whether emotional or financial, means you diversify, by investing your or your clients money in more than one stock or fund. If one loses value, the others do not.
A guru'students are trapped when they are indoctrinated that there is no other investment but their guru, that all other gurus are unworthy. They'll not diversify their emotional investments.
When these loyal students invest all their trust, their ultimate trust, in only one guru, they will live in fear, unacknowledged fear, lest they have made a mistake.
If others issue harm reports that this guru could be unworthy, the students who have put all their trust in that one guru and have devalued all other teachers, and have devalued their own past lives prior to their being 'saved' by this one and only guru - they will feel threatened by these harm reports.
They will not feel free to cash out and leave.
A fear all the more powerful for being disowned and disavowed.
In cult psychology this is termed "Exit Cost".
Re: James Swartz—What is the Truth?
Posted by: Sattva
Date: December 17, 2019 09:12AM
Quote
James has never set himself to be Miss Goody Two Shoes and taught me to become a do-gooder. What James taught me is how full, whole and complete I am, a simple fact that I never knew until I learned this from Vedanta via James as Isvara's instrument. More importantly, James taught me what I need to do to prepare my mind so this important knowledge about myself becomes firm.
Suppose you learned something about yourself that transformed your life in the the utmost positive way possible and you find out that the person who taught you this most wonderful thing about yourself actually had a heinous past.
Does the knowledge of this person's past negate what the person taught me about myself that I value so much? I understand that it might be the case for some people, but I know that the knowledge would not negate the wisdom for me.
I believe that Jesus would be happy to learn from sinners as well as do gooders and I personally think that sinners have more to teach me than the do gooders.
I personally do not want to ignore a good message that is delivered by a flawed messenger.
Corboy:
Hmmm.
First, let me suggest that Swartz' teachings have
no inherent value. None.
Instead, I suggest that Swartz teachings only have value to the extent that you have been persuaded to value them -- and that other teachings are less
valuable, or have no value.
Let us look at gold. Gold. Aurum. The most stable investment. The heavy metal that people hide in their clothes when fleeing for their lives.
Yet...gold has no inherent value. Same thing for gemstones.
Prices per ounce of gold December 31 6:46AM Pacific Standard Time
1,972.27 Canadian Dollar
1,351.73 EURO
$1,522.90 USD
Gold is at these prices not because it is valuable in and of itself but because enough humans have agreed at the same time what gold is worth.
Gold is valuable because lots of people share a belief.
That belief can change.
In disasters, people have handed over piles of gold to buy a bit of food - or get smuggled out of the besieged city.
But, if the warlord pirate occupying your town decides your beautiful daughter is worth more in that moment than the $1 million pile of gold you're offering instead, you and your daughter are in deep trouble.
Your gold will be worthless if the warlord decides he wants, not a million dollars in gold, but that your daughter is worth a million dollars.
Corboy suggests that Swartz' teachings are not valuable by themselves, but because enough students have been persuaded and continue to persuade themselves that Swartz' teachings are valuable.
How we price a guru depends on our method of assigning value:
* Can wisdom be separated from goodness and virtue? If wisdom can be separated from goodness and virtue, then such wisdom will never lose value.
* If we consider that wisdom is inseparable from goodness and virtue, then wisdom will lose value if a teacher's behavior is immoral.
We have already seen that there are circumstances (famine, a warlord's whim)where gold can lose its value.
But if we are persons who are convinced that wisdom can be separated from goodness/virtue and still remain wisdom*, then a guru's teachings can never lose value - no matter how dreadfully a guru has behaved in the past, in the present or in the future.
* This doctrine was popularized by Chogyam Trungpa (alcoholic lecher) as 'Crazy Wisdom'.
There is a real comfort in such a sense of security. That there exists wisdom that can never lose its value.
Disciples of crazy wisdom gurus enjoy this security. No matter what their teacher has done or is doing or could do in the future, the teaching remains valuable. This is a peace that passeth all understanding.
A sort of pearl beyond price, eh?
But...those of us who regard wisdom as inseparable from goodness and virtue regard this price is too high to pay -- and regard such a stance as a menace to civil society.
Sattva wrote:
"I am not interested in learning how to be good. I want to know that I am free."
Was Sattva like this before meeting Swartz or after becoming Swartz' student.
If Sattva had these priorities before meeting Swartz, hmmm.
If Sattva developed these priorities after meeting Swartz, hmmm.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/01/2020 06:35AM by corboy.