Depersonalization is a dissociative disorder.

[www.depersonalization.info]

As I read the article I was struck by how much of it resembled various accounts by persons who report on what they 'enlightenment' experiences.

True enlightenment is rare. Depersonalization is not uncommon.

If anyone comes to your town claiming to be enlightened, you have every right to ask whether this is so, or whether they are in the grip of some mundane psychological state.

Great post corboy :-)

I like the distinction between enlightenment and depersonalisation, that’s so important, and so absent in Landmark and its ilk.

One of the hardest parts of recovery for me has been the rejection or re-evaluation of my early pro-enlightenment beliefs. In recovery I felt I had no belief system left, because what I had originally believed in was so tarnished and spoilt by Landmark and other cheap ~transformational~ systems.

There is still some value in genuine enlightenment if your intentions are good, and if you act out of a sense of service to others.

Chris

Before going out to seek 'enlightenment' (whatever that is), its important to ask yourself why youre interested and what you hope will happen to you should you become enlightened.

It is especially important to ask what one hopes to gain from becoming enlightened. One big problem IMO that has come about is that there's so much glamorization/commodification of enlightenment. We see various allegedly enlightened persons who are making fortunes from churning out tapes, books, and public appearances. They may have benevolent intentions, genuinely hoping to help, but the [i:217865cd09]social context [/i:217865cd09]they use to propagate their teaching is shaped by American style advertising and mass marketing--a context that induces craving, ambition, and fantasy.

The nonverbal covert message of this context is, 'If I get enlightened, I can go out and be a teacher and become famous, desirable, and have an entourage just like X.'

This inflames craving and will conflict with the verbal instructions from the
teacher encouraging us to transcend craving. No wonder so many seekers work so hard and remain trapped.

The commodification/glamorization of enlightenment distracts many from considering that some alleged 'enlightenments' may actually be some kind of bliss/endorphin rush or an energy surge that merely supercharges a person's pre-existing hang-ups and 'flash freezes' those hang ups more firmly into place.

If someone considers themselves a fallible human, he or she can be reasoned with.

But if that person becomes convinced that they're enlightened, that enlightenment brings infallibility* and puts them above the common run of humanity, then they cant be reasoned with. They're worse off than before.

Someone has called this the 'bullet proof ego'. If they base their public career on a reputation of being enlightened, and socialize mostly or solely with persons who are invested in this sort of thing, they risk becoming & remaining inmates of what journalist John Horgan has termed 'the enlightenment industry'.

(*And from what I have heard, enlightenment does not make people infallible. For tax advice you need an accountant, not a guru. It should be noted that all successful gurus hire accountants, and when trouble comes their way, lawyers...ahem.)

A lot of us sincerely believe that enlightenment will liberate us from the vulnerability, pain and anxiety that goes with being human.

John Horgan, the journalist who wrote Rational Mysticism interviewed the authors of [i:217865cd09]The Guru Papers.[/i:217865cd09] He quotes Kramer as saying:

'When I mentioned that some gurus have an air of supreme self-confidence that lends credence to their claims to be enlightened, Kramer smiled grimly. "It’s amusing to me that one of peoples’ conceptions about enlightenment has to do with being this self-contained unit, where nothing can come in and bother you," he said. "That’s what psychopaths are like.

'Nothing comes in and bothers them." '

[johnhorgan.org]

A huge number of us embark upon our quests because we hate the pain and suffering of being human, and want to find a way out.

Marya Hornbacher describes how she spent years at odds with her own embodied humanity and how this fuelled her eating disorder. At the end of her memoir [i:217865cd09]Wasted[/i:217865cd09], Horbacher says that the eating disorder for her was a way to avoid 'The banal itchy pain of life. The arguments with your partner over bad sex, who cooks dinner, whose turn it is to change the litter box.' (my paraphrase).

A full blown eating disorder is as demanding as the worst cult.

Sam Fussell found himself hating his own vulnerability and capacity for anxiety. At age 26 he fled for a number of years into life as a hard core body builder--to the point of going on steroids, living in a body builder household and doing contests. It was as totalistic as any cult. The title of his memoir is [i:217865cd09]'Muscle'[/i:217865cd09]. (Its a must-read for anyone interested in Arnold Schwartzenegger.)

But many of us react to the 'banal itchy pain' of being human by craving enlightenment--and could run the risk of experiences that will estrange us from the human condition rather than reconciling us to that condition.

It is rare to find someone who says 'I only want enlightenment if it [i:217865cd09]'enhumans' [/i:217865cd09]me and increases my ability to bear anxiety and be intimate with my peers. If it puts me at odds with the human condition, I dont want it.'

Gurus and so called enlightened teachers may, with the best of intentions, find themselves in lifestyles where they no longer get normal social feedback. Its a kind of solitary confinement--you are surrounded with people, but they're relating to your role as guru, and to their fantasies about enlightenment, which they're projecting onto you.

They're not relating to you as a person, they are relating to you as a function, as role.

This is very intense, but long term probably gets lonesome as hell. There's no one to keep your eccentricities in check--you run the risk of having your every whim tolerated, or even emulated. If you slide into acts of rudeness, these will be rationalized, even celebrated as evidence of 'crazy wisdom.' Eventually, you may slide from rudeness into outright cruelty--and still the disciples will defend what you do--they'll just dump their shock and anger on anyone else designated as scapegoat...

The minute you stand up and say 'Im enlightened' there is grave risk that all your social interactions will become warped. You enter a lifestyle where sanity becomes nearly impossible, because normal social feedback is removed, or greatly distorted.

No one tells the guru, 'Dude, you're nice but your talks are getting boring, and you have a ridiculous haircut. I'd rather go to the pub, throw darts and play Pee Ball*. Wanna join me?'

(*Which is a real game-- here's the website )

[peeball.com]

Depersonalization vs Enlightenment?
Hope, that article is VALUABLE. Thanks so much for printing it!

Your article states that depersonalization is a common by product of Ecstacy use. You've said your psychopath tried to get you to use Ecstacy.

You were already suffering from depersonalization. If you'd used Ecstacy, that would've been disastrous.

It is noteworthy that many Zen and Sufi masters wrote poetry, music, even painting, and in the case of the Zen people, supervised monastery/farm communities. None of this would have been possible had these adepts been casualties of depersonalization.

If entire societies had succumbed to this 'enlightenment', no one wouldve bothered sending the kids to school and everyone wouldve gone feral.

If anyone runs around saying, just a little too aggressively, 'I am enlightened' its a good idea to wonder whether they're suffering from some other condition such as depersonalization.

True enlightenment is a rare condition. Depersonalization is far more common.

Many who glamorize enlightement insist that it is a state of mind where ordinary ethical/critical criteria do not apply. The minute someone says 'I am enlightened' then by New Age standards, they're immediately in a privilged position, free of all accountability and we are forbidden to challenge them or entertain doubts. Best of all, they can demand money, attention and deference from society at large.

Dont buy it.

Ask questions.

We were given brains for a reason. And even when the nondual nature of reality is appreciated, the genuine teachers of advaita vedanta knew that dualistic perspective on reality and the need for moral behavior also remained valid--and necessary. Anyone who argues that nondual reality makes ethics invalid is teaching misleading doctrine. Timothy Conway wrote:

"he greatest sages of India have long cautioned that enlightened spiritual vision must function on two levels: the absolute level of Truth (paramarthika satyam) and the conventional, "relatively real" level of truth (vyavaharika satyam).

'Thus, the sages, when speaking from the absolute level of parlance, say that, indeed, everything is Divine, all is Brahman, nothing is wrong (in fact, no-thing is really happening!), it's all the perfect leela of the One.

'But, on the relative or conventional level, the level of earthly conduct, these sages strongly uphold the Dharma of righteous action, ahimsa, purity, and so forth. Such sages thus say that, in the absolute view, everything is okay, but on the relative level they are quite adamant that certain behaviors are wrong, sinful, or just inappropriate and should be stopped.

'For devotees of the Lord to sit back and just say that "everything is divine," which is certainly true on the absolute level, but then do nothing about evils and injustices that occur within the dream of earthly life because "it is all divine" --is a terrible avoidance of basic duty on behalf of Dharma. With this apathy and flawed attitude, none of the great evils of history would have ever been resisted and overcome.'

[www.snowcrest.net]

Not everyone who says they are enlightened, is enlightened. They could well be suffering from a form of depersonalization. Or they may have lingering areas of personal imbalance associated with whatever enlightenment they have. And even their realization was genuine, they may not have received adequate training needed to supervise a group or community and ensure that dynamics remain healthy.

A valid enlightenment will not itself give the necessary training to supervise a group and keep it from succumbing to dysfunction. Anyone who sets up as a guru and wants to run an ashram is, IMO, morally obligated to study up on the literature of social psychology and cult dysfunction, and design their communities to eliminate the risk factors that have been recognized by several generations of social psychologists as placing human beings at risk of turning vicious.

No matter how enlightened and holy someone is, he or she must take responsibility to ensure that rakes, bullies and embezzlers dont hide out in the holy one's entourage, and cloak their bad behavior in the glare of the holy one's halo. With all that we have learned about the problems in religious groups, there is no place for naivete if one intends to function as a guru. A charismatic guru who refuses to monitor his or her social surroundings and ensure that the entourage stays honest will be a magnet for enterprising crooks and opportunists who know how to exploit these kinds of sweet, uncritical environments.

And we can always ask what the social and ethical consequences of enlightenment are: Is the person responsible? Are they good company or a pain in the keister? Are they ethical? Do they enjoy life or have they turned into robots? How well do they relate and connect with friends and loved ones?

Can they take care of themselves or do they demand that society take care of them?


Last edited by corboy on 12-18-2003 at 08:07 PM

I moved this post from the Post-Landmark Concentration Syndrome thread :

From 'Only Don't Know' by Zen writer, Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn (aka Soen sa Nim) [www.cizny.org] ISBN 0-87704-054-0.

'A don't know mind is a before-thinking mind. Before thinking is clear like space. Clear like space is clear like a mirror.'

In other words, ‘only don't know’ means choosing to pay attention, in order to dispel confusion, to be non-judgmental, to see reality as it really is, 'just like this'. Everything just is what it is - a pencil is a pencil, Landmark is Landmark, a cult is a cult - without interpretations or opinions. It's not nihilist, it's not like E&M, it's about stripping reality down to the bare essentials of love and compassion. Very different to the cynical Landmark use of DKDK as a hypnotic enrolment technique.

Zen teaches that there are 4 (main) levels of enlightenment (or 'don't know mind'). I suspect that the lower levels (the 'Landmark levels') are hypnotic dissociations, and as for the upper, top level, well - either it's a higher level of dissociation and the whole concept of enlightenment is a fraud, or it's something else, a different order of 'being' that is valid in and of itself.

(Personally I find the levels of enlightenment make sense viewed from a scientific perspective of trial and error, where you 'try on' a new theory or idea, test it against reality, and gradually refine it until you have a working model that fits the known evidence - a bit like the concept of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Landmark's 'philosophy' is at the lower end of the scale, a set of theses that has not been tested or peer reviewed,
and which fails at the first hurdle of rational examination.)

The 4 levels of enlightenment, according to some Zen traditions, for example Seung Sahn in my favourite Zen book ‘Dropping Ashes on the Buddha’, are :

1. attachment to thinking (0=1, 1=0; all things are the same, all things come from emptiness and will return to emptiness; form is emptiness, emptiness is form; the pencil is a bird; “your complaint is a ~racket~”)

2. attachment to emptiness (1x0=0, 10000x0=0; no thinking, no words, no speech, no God, nothing at all except the Zen belly shout KATZ; no form, no emptiness; the pencil does not exist; “life is empty and meaningless, and it’s empty and meaningless that it’s empty and meaningless”)

3. attachment to freedom (1+2=3000, 100x1000=-4; the arena of magic and miracles, no hindrance in space or time; freedom form, freedom emptiness; the pencil is choosing how it’s being; “I manage myself to create your listening”)

4. “just like this” = no-attachment thinking (3x3=9; all things are just as they are, the truth is ‘just like this’; form is form, emptiness is emptiness; the pencil is a pencil; Landmark is Landmark)

Another way of explaining it is that “first enlightenment” is attachment to thinking, attachment to emptiness and attachment to freedom; “original enlightenment” is no-attachment thinking (‘like this’, the sky is blue, the grass is green, the pencil is black); and “final enlightenment” is ‘just like this’ (when hungry eat, when tired sleep; the pencil is a pencil).

I think Landmark’s non-linear, ontological ‘empty and meaningless’ paradigm (and Landmark work in general) is level 1, attachment-thinking, or “first enlightenment”, which is a type of hypnosis, a form of dissociation from normal, everyday ‘like this’ or 'just like this' reality.

Chris

Either John Horgan or someone he interviewed spoke of 'The enlightenment industry.'

The minute you take a liberating meme, a meme that is meant to wake us up by busting memes, and you commodify it, trademark it and turn it into another burdensome parasitic meme, you've 'co-opted the process for your self aggrandizement.'

If a disciple does well, the guru or LGAT takes all the credit.

If they louse you up and make you ill, you're weak and your 'not taking responsiblity for your life.'

Either way the hustler wins, and you're left disoriented and bleeding in the gutter.

My hunch is that this is the Catch-22 of toxic forms of esoteric or Fourth Way work.

Gurdjieff claimed to want to wake people up, and appropriated powerful techniques from valid spiritual traditions like Tibetan Buddhism.

But IMO, G was so trapped in power motive that he failed to see that the 'power tools' he appropriated from older practice traditions were meant to help people wake up to serve the larger purpose of becoming compassionate toward ALL sentient beings. (All sentient beings is a much larger area of concern than the members of one's cozy, secretive group)

of her 3 years as disciple of her son, Andrew Cohen. She wrote a memoir, 'The Mother of God'

She describes many experiences in which she felt spacy, alienated from her surroundings.

Andrew and his guru HWL Poonja assured her that these states of mind were evidence of enlightement.

Significantly, these assurances did not give Tarlo any sense of empowerment or confidence. Instead, she felt more confused, more powerless--and yet more dependant on her son for guidance and validation.

It appears that many of the experiences she describes were episodes of depersonalization/dissociation, and not enlightenment at all.

Tarlo began experiencing these episodes while reeling with the news that her son had 'become enlightened' was suddenly deferred to and adulated as a guru, and began demanding deference and total submission from his followers---and his own mother.

And all this was happening in India, a foreign country that many new visitors like Tarlo find quite overwhelming and stressful.

If you're under massive stress, experience depersonalization and are told that this is evidence, not of distress, but proof that you're enlightened, this will not empower you. It will only make you more dependant on the person peddling the enlightenment label.

Its a perfect method for a hustler: place people under stress. Confuse them and disorient them.
Trigger depersonalization
Tell them they're enlightened
Tell them they need more exposure to the kind of treatment that has disoriented them.

Play this game properly and you'll keep people confused and dependant on you forever.

Telling people they're saints or that they're enlightened is the ultimate power trip.

Seekers travelling to India for spiritual quests are often unaware that India is quite a confusing and disorienting place. You'll often feel overwhelmed and perhaps experience episodes of dissociation/depersonalization, simply because you have less privacy, less sleep, are more vulnerable to illness and are under more sensory bombardment than you're accustomed to.

And all this is happening to you BEFORE you encounter shyster gurus who are adept at disorienting people, and pandering to their fantasies, telling them what they want to hear about themselves.

Westerners have been in India for over 200 years. Its indigenous crooks and con artists have studied our psychology and know which of our buttons to push. When a nation has been constantly invaded by thugs and brutes, the only way to survive is to master the psychology of one's conquerers and play to their vanity.

In his book 'Afterzen: Adventures of a Zen Student Out on His Ear' Janwillem van de Wettering tells of meeting a guru in a snowed in airport in the US. The guru told him how he got started in the US. van de Wettering did not give his name.

The guru was from a poor Brahmin (upper caste) family. He entered the US as an illegal alien in the 1960s. He was cleaning tables at a restaurant at JFK.

He noticed that other Indians were arriving at his airport, and being meeted with limosines and escorts upon arrival. They were gurus. They looked like him, knew Vedic Scriptures and could chant just as he'd been taught to do as a boy.

So, the illegal alien decided he could be a guru too. As de Wettering put it, 'The title is not protected.'*He got himself the right clothes, began to act like a guru, and soon had a following, and a nice property.

*(This matches up with Agehananda Bharati's description of the informal, ascriptive process by which people become gurus in India--read his book [i:1c6a98c0d5]'The Light at the Center'[/i:1c6a98c0d5])

When his disciples met him, he would praise them and give them cookies. He told de Wettering that he gave Americans chocolate chip cookies.

'Americans associate them with parental loving guidance. I dont care for them much, myself. British disciples--I give them digestive biscuits'

Janwillem asked him 'Do you bake your presents yourself?'

No, the guru bought his cookies at a supermarket. He had mastered the psychology of Westerners--knowing, among other things, exactly which type of cookie the main subtypes of Westerners responded to!

If you go to India, go with your eyes open. Your psychology has been studied there for centuries and people know how you tick--and some of them will not use that knowledge in benevolent ways.

The worst of them will trick you into thinking youre enlightened, when in fact, your unconscious fantasies are being manipulated against you.

What is the difference between enlightenment and depersonalisation ?

What is enlightenment ? According to corboy’s post here, it’s either what Steve Norquist calls ‘an intense desire to find and know the truth’ (which rather begs the question, what is the ‘truth’ and how can we recognise it ?) combined with compassion and service toward other humans.

Or it is just what John Horgan calls ‘a way out (of reality) ………… because we hate the pain and suffering of being human’ ?

For myself, if it’s just a self-obsessed search for ‘existence in the truth’, ‘only manifestation …………. that is all’, without an ethical or moral dimension, without compassion, service and love, then it’s worthless and dehumanising. And that is all you get from cults and LGATs. 90-95% of what is called ‘enlightenment’ in this world is not enlightenment, it is the depersonalised fake version done for profit or for personal power, or both.

Chris

A great day for posts here for me, 3 separate posts from corboy on different threads all combined to ring alarm bells in my head and give me a ~breakthrough~ in my recovery.

First to-day I read :

> Its possible you could, without realizing it, be more suggestible to certain triggers …………..
If you find yourself feeling 'driven' to make certain decisions, and you cannot pin point why, slow DOWN and make damn sure your former (cult) training isn’t being triggered.
It sounds like being infected with herpes virus--you can get 'flares' without warning.<

This has happened to me many times when I’ve felt driven to make inexplicably bad decisions (money, work and relationships figure strongly) as if by internal command or suggestion from a voice in my head.

Does anyone know how to trace the source of these triggers back to their origin ? I’d love to find out where and when they were implanted.

Then I read :

> ……….. charismatic leaders are, all too often manipulative and do tremendous harm. (He) told me that he had never met a charismatic leader who was capable of true intimacy with a peer--they all had to be in control at every moment, and constantly worked every angle, every waking moment of their lives. (He) is one of the few people who conveys the humanity of charismatic cult leaders--their charisma is a cover up of their failure to be human in the full sense of the word. They're trying, quite desperately to rescue themselves and use other people as instruments in their own self rescue. <

The desire for self-rescue was there very early on in my life, I can remember talking to my father about it as a teenager when he asked me about what I wanted to do when I grew up. As an adult in a Human Potential group I was in a light hypnosis in the ‘hot seat’ and was asked by the facilitator to describe my ideal career (I talked about a career in healing) and he asked me what my greatest achievement in healing would be, and I replied ‘Healing myself’.

Finally,
> The more powerful an idea/meme is at freeing our minds, the more it can be used as a potent co-factor to a parasitic meme that puts us to sleep. 'Cofactors' are chemical substances without which enzymes cannot function. My take is a parasitic meme will become far more powerful at accessing our minds and harming us if that parasitic meme is linked to a true meme-buster from a valid tradition.
The 'meme buster' when it is used BY ITSELF, by a person with altruistic intentions, will help us wake up.
That same meme, when used as a cofactor for a parasitic meme, by an exploitative person, will arouse our trust and interest, opening the gates for the parasitic meme to come in and infect us.
…………. When you encounter an intellectully exciting set of memes, always, always ask if they're linked to something potentially toxic. <
The coming together of these three quotes to-day feels like a wonderful serendipity and a huge step-forward for my understanding of what happened to me.

Thanks corboy !

Chris

A great day for posts here for me, 3 separate posts from corboy on different threads all combined to ring alarm bells in my head and give me a ~breakthrough~ in my recovery.

First to-day I read :

> Its possible you could, without realizing it, be more suggestible to certain triggers …………..
If you find yourself feeling 'driven' to make certain decisions, and you cannot pin point why, slow DOWN and make damn sure your former (cult) training isn’t being triggered.
It sounds like being infected with herpes virus--you can get 'flares' without warning.<

This has happened to me many times when I’ve felt driven to make inexplicably bad decisions (money, work and relationships figure strongly) as if by internal command or suggestion from a voice in my head.

Does anyone know how to trace the source of these triggers back to their origin ? I’d love to find out where and when they were implanted.

Then I read :

> ……….. charismatic leaders are, all too often manipulative and do tremendous harm. (He) told me that he had never met a charismatic leader who was capable of true intimacy with a peer--they all had to be in control at every moment, and constantly worked every angle, every waking moment of their lives. (He) is one of the few people who conveys the humanity of charismatic cult leaders--their charisma is a cover up of their failure to be human in the full sense of the word. They're trying, quite desperately to rescue themselves and use other people as instruments in their own self rescue. <

The desire for self-rescue was there very early on in my life, I can remember talking to my father about it as a teenager when he asked me about what I wanted to do when I grew up. As an adult in a Human Potential group I was in a light hypnosis in the ‘hot seat’ and was asked by the facilitator to describe my ideal career (I talked about a career in healing) and he asked me what my greatest achievement in healing would be, and I replied ‘Healing myself’.

Finally,
> The more powerful an idea/meme is at freeing our minds, the more it can be used as a potent co-factor to a parasitic meme that puts us to sleep. 'Cofactors' are chemical substances without which enzymes cannot function. My take is a parasitic meme will become far more powerful at accessing our minds and harming us if that parasitic meme is linked to a true meme-buster from a valid tradition.
The 'meme buster' when it is used BY ITSELF, by a person with altruistic intentions, will help us wake up.
That same meme, when used as a cofactor for a parasitic meme, by an exploitative person, will arouse our trust and interest, opening the gates for the parasitic meme to come in and infect us.
…………. When you encounter an intellectully exciting set of memes, always, always ask if they're linked to something potentially toxic. <

The coming together of these three quotes to-day feels like a wonderful serendipity and a huge step-forward for my understanding of what happened to me.

Thanks corboy !

Chris