Restoring Self-Enquiry

Had an interesting time last night re-aligning myself to self-enquiry after the distractions of the last week. As mentioned, I'd been feeling a little weakened in that dimension. So I began re-applying myself to it again with a little more conscious force, and for some reason I became rather naturally drawn to Papaji's recommendation of using the mantra "I am free". It's funny how effective that can be. Even a few years ago, I'd have considered this approach a little flaky, or silly, or just plain forced. Now it just seems natural and true and restorative. It's not really about the mind thinking itself into freedom, it's about directly connecting to our inherent freedom, and just affirming what is actually true of me, and of everyone. Really liberating and strengthening. In some basic sense, practiced in a certain way it really is a form of self-enquiry, in that it is a way of putting attention on the "I", and seeing that the truth of "I" is that we are free. I can't tell you how good this feels, how certain freedom can feel, unless you know this yourself already - which you do.

Coincidentally, I got an email from a friend asking me to take a look at the Wikipedia entry for Ramana Maharshi. He felt that it had been watered down by new agey western neo-Advaitists, and needed re-editing, and wondered if I could be of help. So I went to read it, and found it to be a little sloppy, disorganized, and in places hagiographic. It could definitely use some work, but I don't think I'm expert enough in Ramana's life and teachings to be the guy to do it. I clicked to the entry on self-enquiry and likewise found it in need of work. Even so, I still found it very inspiring, and found myself drawn into the practice very directly. The use of the "I am free" exercise seemed to prep me for this, and the self-enquiry took on a lot of strength and depth. It's rather amazing to me time and again how quickly and easily self-enquiry can restore me to a basic and open-ended sense of freedom and happiness. Even if the source is imperfect, it doesn't matter, because self-enquiry derives its power from the Self, not from whatever book or person inspired us to practice it. And perhaps that's a point the Ramana entry in Wikipedia misses. It was certainly a major point in Ramana's own teaching, that the "power of silence" referred to in the article is merely the power of the Self, not something peculiar to Ramana.

Cultic Diversions from Self-enquiry

Well, that was an interesting week.

Sorry for dropping the ball on this blog. In part, it's kids home from college – the good part. In another, not so good part, I ended up finishing out my time on the Lightmind Forums before they closed for good. Made the mistake of getting into it with Gaddy there, my long-time mean-spirited foil, and boy, was that a mistake. Rather dispiriting, but what the hell did I expect? As I mentioned, I need to get out of the forum world in any case, and I guess this should have been taken as a sign.

But do I listen? Nooooooooo. Somehow, I get an email from an MSN forum, just some little link to a post on the afterlife of animals (don't ask), which out of lame curiosity I follow, and end up getting into a thread there. For a little background, this MSN forum is called “Reality Checkpoint”, and it has an archive of channeled material written by Kyle Griffiths (forum handle “spiritrebel23”) who has a very interesting thesis he has been pursuing for over 20 years. He originally published his ideas in a book called “War in Heaven” in 1988, which as manager of the old Dawn Horse Bookstore in San Rafael, I got a mailer for, ordered some copies of, and bought one myself. The book is rather remarkably fascinating in creating a complete, internally consistent, if somewhat paranoid vision of the history of religion, past and present.

The thesis of War in Heaven is that almost all of religion and spirituality is basically a false front for a massive scam run from the astral planes by perverted souls he calls “theocrats”. These souls are no different from ordinary human souls, except that they have learned how to stop reincarnating by feeding off the energies of other souls on the astral plane, and the energies of humans on the physical plane, who they develop a parasitic relationship with, called “religion”. The basic idea is that all religion is essentially the creation of these theocrats, who convince humans to worship them, give them energy, and keep them alive and growing on the astral plane. To keep this going, the theocrats induce humans to enter into a passive trance-like state through prayer, chanting, ritual, and all the various methodologies of religion. During this trance state, theocrats are able to both feed off human energy, and send subliminal messages to the humans which reinforce this state, and which develop into a whole set of religious cosmologies and moral systems which become codified as various forms of religious tradition. He describes the evolution of this theocratic basis for religion from early shamanism to traditions of human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, and then monotheism and other more stable religious systems, and finally to the modern era of extra-religious systems of politics and modern technology, all built on the same model of theocratic mind-control. Griffith has gotten all this information from channeled “guides” who belong to an astral-based group called “the Invisible College” that has been fighting these theocrats since about the 13th century, and who come from other planets, and are responsible for everything from the Renaissance to modern science to the secular revolution and popular democracy.

I could go into more detail, but I won't. If anyone is interested, the entire text of “War in Heaven”, along with plenty of updates, is available here. (The chapters are numbered, but not in order. Scroll down to the bottom for the beginning chapters). A good summary by another member of the group is available here.

Now, I had been quite impressed with the book back in 1988, and kept its ideas in mind over the years. I felt the guy was onto something, even if it didn't seem like the whole picture. Certainly there's plenty of reason to see some kind of psychic vampirism as a big factor in a lot of religion and spirituality, but it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that all of it is built that way. In any case, I didn't pay much attention to it again until this past summer, when I found these links again, reread the material, and thought about posting on their forums, and asking a few questions. I never got around to it, until I got this little email about the animals, went there, perused the forums, and found this thread here, which is basically a very harsh critique by Griffith of a near death experience (NDE) by this guy Mellen-Thomas Benedict, who had a very powerful NDE that is posted on his website. (I'd recommend reading it for its own merits. Quite an interesting NDE many seem to consider one of the best out there). Griffith in no uncertain terms finds Mellen's experience to be an example of very sophisticated modern theocratic deception, using cosmic visions of oneness and love to fool us into thinking that there is anything going in the astral realms other than theocratic abuse. Looking for forum-action (fool that I am), I began posting there in response, because I felt that Griffith was being quite unfair to Mellen, and labeling even what I would consider good and positive spiritual experiences and messages as theocratic.

You can read the thread here if you like. It degenerates pretty quickly. I gotta admit, I wasn't expecting this to happen, and in part its my fault, because pretty quickly I start realizing these guys have created a very insular cult-mindset around this material, and just aren't interested in questioning their basic assumptions, or feeling any need to examine the bigotry implied in their criticisms of others, like Mellen. (And as is my way, I wasn't shy about pointing this out). It's an example once again of how the cult mind operates, and excludes everything that doesn't mesh with the received wisdom of the cult. I really go into it for a few days, and as you can see if you read the thread, it ended up with me being banned. Form your own ideas. It's a shame in a way, because like I say, I think there's some merit to the ideas in WiH, but they just are one slice of the realities of this universe. An important one, I think, but one that is relegated to oblivion, I gather, by the close-mindedness and cultic exclusivity of its advocates. Kind of like Adidam in its own way.

Anyway, it's all a little embarrassing to me, and the real question is, what's any of it got to do with self-enquiry? The short answer is, nothing. In many respects it just represents my own ability to get distracted from self-enquiry by whatever gets into my mind. And I certainly noticed that over this time, my practice of self-enquiry has been much weaker and I have felt the effects of that – weakened energy, subtle fascination, mild irritability, slight depression, etc. It's a sign of my karmas, my tendencies to get into stupid shit like this and become distracted by conflicts with other people. In this case, it's much worse than anything you'd find on Lightmind, where most people at least were very much engaged and open to questioning themselves. In many respects, it's good that it turned out this way. I got my views on the WiH material clarified and deepened, and being banned will keep me from wasting any more time on these guys.

Still, it's not a bad set of ideas. Even the criticism made of higher spiritual experiences as potentially being abused by astral theocrats isn't something I dismiss. It's just that there's far more to it than that, and far more to the universe than these hellish lower astral planes described by Griffith.

So, maybe I'll get back into focusing on self-enquiry, and return this blog to its intended purposes. Not that I mind a little commentary on other spiritual matters like this now and then.

Update:

I want to add that I'd discourage people from posting on the Reality Checkpoint forums in response to my contributions there. I don't want to flood those guys with any more traffic bringing questions and opinions they might find disturbing. Clearly they don't want that kind of attention, and I don't want to encourage it. So feel free to read the posts, but only respond there if you're really interested in their program. You have to get Kyle's permission to join in any case in order to post, and I don't think he'd like that if it was inspired by our thread. That said, do as you wish, naturally.

Self-examination in the First Person

One of the difficulties I have writing this blog is that I am so accustomed to responding to others, it is hard to simply think for myself, and write about what I really care about. My long experience in Adidam required me to think along certain lines, and to constantly respond to both Adi Da and his whole community of chattering practitioners in a manner that constantly compromised my own integrity in both thought and action . The Daism Forum helped break me from the spell of Da, and allowed me to think for myself, but I became bound instead to a constant dialog with people who were not pursuing the same goals or interests or outlook. As a consequence, I could seldom speak as freely as I wished, and pursue the lines of enquiry that genuinely interested me, at least in my writings there. I may have seemed at times to be highly outspoken and opinionated, but my writings were constantly circumscribed by the particulars of the dialog, and who I was speaking with, and responding to. I seldom initiated a dialog there, but in general only responded to others. This left a gap in my participation there that I think has had consequences, just as being in Adidam had consequences.

The consequence in both cases has been an inhibition of the development of my own thinking and feeling. Of course, I haven't limited myself to the forums, and have pursued all kinds of ideas and spiritual practices of my own. But I haven't written about them, and since writing seems an important part of my self-development, that omission seems important. Even more importantly, my addiction to those dialogs seems to indicate an emptiness in myself that I have been trying to fill, using a source and method that can't possibly be fruitful or fulfilling. Conversation with others is of course important, but I think it is secondary, and unfortunately I think I have made it primary, simply by default, whereas what I have neglected as a consequence is the conversation with myself that really is fruitful and fulfilling.

So I resist writing on this blog, I think, not so much because of the personal exposure it brings, but because it requires a commitment to self-examination, and self-development, that is not bounded by others. I have very much enjoyed the forums I've participated in, but I think I've allowed myself to be limited by them as well, in part because the constant give and take helps distract me from myself, from the hard work of self-examination and facing up to oneself that can only be accomplished by myself, in relation to myself, in cracking the nut of self. That kind of distraction has not really served me well, I now think, and it is time to make a few course corrections.

So this blog, if I do it right, will reflect what I care about, and think about, and feel, and not necessarily what any readers out there will care about. I may be entirely wrong about so much that I present here it won't even be funny, but I think I need to pursue my own wrongs as much as my own rights. It's not that I don't welcome feedback as such either. Already there's been quite a few good comments. I could respond to them, but I just don't know that I want to allow this blog to become driven by the dialogs I might enter into with readers and others who respond to what I say. I don't want to be limited by having to explain myself to others in a manner that I think “works” for them, or makes sense to them, or allows for a dialog to proceed in some sensible manner. I may not proceed in any sensible manner, or at least not sensible to anyone other than myself, and maybe not even to myself.

Nor do I really want to be limited by any outside authorities. I will probably be examining various scriptures, Gurus, and various spiritual writings. I've even thought of doing regular book reviews. But I don't want to be defined by such things. One question that intrigues me is, “what is Brahman?”. If I had begun a thread on the Wilber Forum about this, we'd get quite a few opinions, and scriptural citations, and a long list of the various traditional arguments that have been pursued historically about this question, and then a lot of bickering and backfighting that could be both amusing and productive in a certain way, I'm not trying to knock it. People have lots of interesting things to say about the subject, I'm sure. Yes, fine and well, but I don't really care about that. I want to know what Brahman is - directly, in my own experience, my own consciousness, my own being and life. That's what counts to me. The rest is secondary. Now, it doesn't mean that secondary issues aren't relevant or important. I think they are. But they are secondary, not primary, and I don't want to become distracted by secondary issues to the detriment of what is primary.

When I ask myself what is Brahman, I don't look to scriptures, I look to my own experiential being and life and consciousness and awareness. What here is Brahman? When I say “I am Brahman”, why does that resonate and become meaningful to me? Because it does, and I'd like to pursue that matter further. What some scripture might say about that could be helpful, but it's only helpful if it provokes the direct finding of Brahman, the knowing of Brahman, and if it doesn't, then who cares? It might help someone else, to be sure, but if it doesn't help me, it's not very consequential to me. Many things which help me may be of no consequence to others, and I expect that few readers will care about my pursuit of these things. Except, perhaps, to the degree that I'm pursuing them at all, which may be interesting in its own odd way. I don't know if this blog will really be directly meaningful to anyone, unless, to some degree, it simply inspires people to make their own enquiry, and pursue their own truths, in their own way.

Enquiring about Self-Enquiry

I almost decided this was all a mistake and that I should delete this blog. Then I just realized I was being a chicken. So what if this comes off as really, really stupid?

So, what's the important thing here? The practice of self-enquiry. I'm not entirely sure how to write about it. All I know is that it feels right and good and stabilizing.

I started practicing self-enquiry in a very loose way a couple or three of years ago. When I was still in Adidam, or at least thought I was still in Adidam, I had gone through a real crisis about what the hell I was practicing. The whole form of Guru-devotion I had been involved with there fell apart, and the whole notion of meditating on something or someone “else” no longer made sense. I found myself falling back on myself, on my own sense of self. This was in part due to a way I had begun to approach the whole practice of “inspecting the self-contraction” as Da refers to it. I had come to the conclusion that the way to do this was just to feel the sense of “self” itself, feel into it, and through it. The more I did this, the more interesting it became, and the less interesting the rest of Adidam became. So as I left Adidam altogether, I didn't really have a practice at all, so I just felt this sense of “self”, and something about that seemed grounding and centering. I wondered if this was me just reinforcing my ego, a bit no-no in Adidam and certain spiritual minds sets, including my own, but I was in a taboo-breaking mood in any case, and thought it was a good idea to see where this went.

One thing I started to do back then, before I even began anything else, was “praying” to my own Self for help. I didn't even quite know how to conceive of this, I didn't even know what my own Self was, but I just felt that there was something far deeper to me than I understood, and if I couldn't pray to a Guru anymore, couldn't pray to Adi Da anymore, at least I could pray to my deeper Self for help. So once in a while I would just address a prayer to my Self, in whatever way I could, asking for help. And it seemed to come to me somehow, first in the form of various teachings and scriptures, but also in the form of self-enquiry itself. It just took me a while to figure out what was going on. I'm a very slow learner, if you haven't noticed by now.

I began to read Ramana Maharshi again, after many decades of barely glancing at his dharma, apart from its occasional appearance in Adi Da's own teachings. I was deeply impressed and so much of it began to seem natural to me, which was odd because while I had always loved Ramana, I had never felt much moved by his teachings, especially self-enquiry. I had tried Adi Da's various forms of self-enquiry over the years, but never fully connected with that either. Although I recall a very strong dream I had maybe ten years before this, in which I suddenly realized with deep conviction that I would never mature spiritually until I completely committed myself to the practice of enquiry. However, even after that dream I couldn't really do that, at least with Da's forms of self-enquiry, but the memory of this conviction remained with me.

I only very occasionally practiced enquiry, even after reading Ramana's teaching. I didn't quite understand what it meant in practical terms, and didn't know how to engage it. I began to read other Advaitic teachers, including Nisargadatta, Papaji, Annamalai, etc. I also perused A Course In Miracles and its non-dual teachings. These were helpful, but also confusing. Eventually, I decided to write to David Godman, who had written or edited quite a few books on these people, asking for help in trying to understand self-enquiry. We probably exchanged about 30 emails, and he recommended quite a few good books on the subject, particularly his own Guru Sri Lakshmana's book that David had written and edited, and two books by Sadhu Om (another disciple of Ramana). The essential summary of all these was that the practice of self-enquiry boils down to feeling the feeling of “self”, of “I”, of ego, and simply observing this feeling, and simply observing everything from the position of this self-feeling. I began to see that in the most basic sense this was what I had already been moved to do, but didn't quite consciously understand, and didn't know how to engage. In some sense, understanding this was itself liberating, but it was also a bit threatening, and scary.

I tried practicing this fairly intensively for several months. It felt good, but also difficult, and I had quite a few stumbles along the way. One thing I noticed was how intensively this practice aroused a devotional response in me. One thing that had spontaneously begun to occur in me while leaving Adidam and first beginning the rudimentary practice of self-enquiry without really knowing what I was doing is that I would sometimes begin to spontaneously start saying to myself “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you” for no particular reason. This would happen while I was working, or just sitting around, and I never really had much of an explanation for it. I wasn't sure who I was saying this to, or if I was really saying it to anyone at all. I never actually “tried” to practice this in any way, but I would just start saying it, and with real feelings of love, and it seemed to purify my mind and action somehow, so I didn't really try to figure it out.

I could feel that this whole practice of self-enquiry was very purifying, and yet it was also rather unsettling. At a certain point I simply got confused and uncertain about it all, and I found myself getting complicated and unclear as to what to do. At the same time, all kinds of unsettling things were continuing to happen in my life, and practicing self-enquiry began to seem both a little too difficult to maintain, and secondary to so much else. However, I did manage to keep it going, and over time my life got quite a lot simpler and less distracting. At this point, I don't have many distractions other than ones I generate in my own mind. So it seems like a good time to finally get serious and committed to the process, and see how deep I can go with it.

I really do enjoy self-enquiry at this point. There's a great feeling of freedom that comes with it, and just plain enjoyment. The feeling of self is simply so grounding and life-giving that it attracts me more and more into the practice for its own sake, rather than any sense of “getting somewhere” spiritually. And the question of “who” I am is so much more wide-open and liberating than I had imagined possible. Combining it with the mantra of “I am Brahman” seems quite natural and inspiring.

I'd like to write more about self-enquiry, I'm just not sure how to do it. I suppose in the weeks ahead something will come to me.

Poonja Swami

Here's an interesting recent experience:

Last week, on my 50th birthday, the "formal" beginning of this whole hermitage phase of my life, I woke up at about 5:00 AM from a very odd dream. In the dream, I was waiting for a table at a fancy seafood restaurant. Out in the lobby, there were aquariums filled with strange fish that were on the menu. My name was called to be seated at a table, but the hostess explained that before I could be seated, I had to disclose my religion. I told her that I didn't have a religion, but I did have a Guru. She asked me the name of my Guru, and I blurted out “Poonja Swami” before I could even think further. For a moment I felt some sense of guilt or uncertainty, that perhaps I should have said Ramana or Saradamma, but it seemed telling that my immediate response was Poonja Swami. I was asked to write his name on a slate, and I did, but I misspelled it as “Pooja Swami”.

On awakening, I felt into this dream, and something about it felt right to me. I have no real clue about my whole relationship to Gurus, and what any of that ultimately means. But there's some solid reason to feel a strong connection to Papaji. For one thing, he's the only one of these neo-Advaitin guys that I ever actually met in the flesh, back in 1974 in Saanen Switzerland when I was there to see J. Krishnamurti's talks for the summer. I was just 16, and I had no idea who Papaji was at the time. He was just this very impressive looking Indian dude hanging out in the tent where Krishnamurti gave his talks. They had a book stall in the back of the tent, and after Krishnamurti's talks I would linger there and look at the books. I noticed Papaji hanging there also, looking at the books. Something about him struck me as incredibly mature. He seemed to carry himself with such confidence and ease, without self-consciousness or ego, just a mature human being, and I thought to myself, damn, that's what it is to be a man. I wanted to sidle up to him and strike up a conversation, but I felt a bit nervous about this. I did stand next to him, and noticed that he was looking at the books in the Ramana Maharshi section, and I wanted to point out the “Talks with Ramana Maharshi” book to him and recommend it, but something stopped me. I just wasn't sure if I should impose myself on him. So I didn't. Regrets? Perhaps! Of course, it would have been rather hilarious to recommend Ramana's books to one of Ramana's primary disciples, but that's another story. In any case, I went home to my room in a local farmhouse, and began studying the same book of Talks, and while reading Ramana something extraordinary happened. I began to watch my mind speed up, as if it were a tape recorder playing at high speed, accelerating faster and faster, all my thought whipping around in a frenzy, and then suddenly the whole tape slid down the back of my head, through my neck, and into the right side of my heart. Suddenly my mind was empty, and a tremendous feeling of peace pervaded me, and the whole world. I stopped reading and simply sat in this peace, and it persisted for days on end. My mind slowly came back, but it was easy to simply sit without mind, to walk without mind, and to simply feel this pervasive peace in the midst of everything. Over the next few days I went on walks in the Swiss countryside, and on a couple of occasions I came across Poonja Swami and some of his friends walking also. I didn't say anything, and I didn't even connect the experience to him. But I realized that I had seen him several times before around town, in the tent, and even on leaving the train station on arriving in Saanen weeks before.

I didn't connect all of this to Poonja Swami until a couple of years ago when I read David Godman's autobiography of Poonja Swami, Nothing Ever Happened, in which he mentions that Poonja Swami actually went to Saanen and attended J. Krishnamurti's talks in 1974, the same year I was there. I then realized who the Indian fellow was in the tent, and the experience I had afterwards began to make sense, since Papaji was well known for traveling around the world and spontaneously giving experiences of the Self to people in the course of his travels, often without any formal meeting at all, just while walking around. So I figure I was one of those people. I was having all kinds of unusual spiritual experiences that summer, and though I didn't connect them to Papaji, it's interesting that I kept bumping into him there.

Since leaving Adi Da several years ago, I have often wondered if I would ever have another Guru again. The only living Guru who I feel at all attracted to is Muthra Sri Saradamma, who lives in India and keeps a very private life. I've hoped to travel to India someday to see her, but for now that's not realistic. Ramana of course is a possibility, but I never actually met him in the flesh, and somehow that seems important to me. I did have an extraordinary spiritual “meeting” with him when I was 15, and have felt connected to him ever since, but it's always felt that he was pointing me to others, not to himself. And I don't know if it matters that Poonja Swami is no longer alive in the flesh himself. But this in some respects doesn't matter. My own situation is what it is. What interests me most is Poonja Swami's teachings, and I suppose this dreams suggests to me that I should pay special attention to these.

It happened that for a couple of days prior to this dream I had been reading some of Papaji's teachings for the first time in a few months. I thought this is what probably triggered the dream. I found a couple of talks online which were quite inspiring, such as this one. An excert from this talk stuck out in my mind:

When you exert effort or practice sadhana you will camouflage and cover the truth. You will have to remove this covering because it is you who put it there. This covering will be removed through your effort. And when all efforts are done away with - when all attempts, all intents and intentions, all ideas and notions are rejected - at that time ask yourself, "Who am I?" You will certainly find the answer.

This is how freedom is already attained: You are already free. If you can hear this once from a teacher you are free. If you cannot hear this, then practice. If you can listen to a teacher who is not a liar, who is speaking the truth, and if you are honestly longing for freedom then listen once and you are free.

If you are not honest and if the teacher is not authentic it will not work. You will have to take up a practice if something is false somewhere. What is that practice? At all times, walking, sleeping, dreaming, on waking, while standing, sitting, lying, go on chanting the mantra. I can recommend mantras also, as a second best. If you can repeat this mantra from now till your last breath I guarantee you will not appear again in a next birth; you will not fall into any womb. What is the mantra? "I AM FREE!" Take up this practice if you do not believe me.

If you can listen, if you long for freedom, and you feel that I am honest when I tell you that you are free, then accept it! Hear this only once and you are free.

If you do not accept what I am saying then I will give you a practice as a second best. You will have to continue practicing on every breath - every breath of the waking state, of the dream state, of the sleeping state up to the last breath.

This seemed to apply to me. I've of course practiced self-enquiry, but I haven't immediately awakened from the practice. No doubt few do. I seem to be one of those people who needs to continue doubting, or at least needs to slowly remove his doubts. My general stupidity and slowness in all these matters will undoubtedly become a theme in this blog, so it's best to just lay it out there. In any case, this recommendation form Poonja Swami certainly made some sense, and I wondered if this might be a good thing for me to practice.

The next day, I read this from another online talk by Poonja Swami:

The practice nearest to truth for those few who want to realize absolute Brahman is meditation only on attribute-less Brahman itself, without any object of concentration. When people start to mediate they do something, they hold some image in the mind or some word. That may be useful, but it is even better to think of attribute-less Brahman, to always keep aware of the attribute-less Brahman during meditation, knowing that, “I am Brahman.” without focusing on any object of the past, present, or future.

This is the nearest practice. If you want to do any practice, to meditate on attribute-less Brahman, immaculate Brahman, which is none other than your own Atman - your own fundamental nature. If you are not able to realize the truth instantly you can continue this practice for a while. Slowly you will see that the meditator and the meditated upon vanish. Neither attribute-less Brahman nor meditation upon attribute-less Brahman has anything to do with a meditator or something meditated upon.

So this constant exercise is advised, constant sadhana on attribute-less Brahman, thinking, “I am Brahman.” If you want to think something, why think, “I am the body?” The body does not last. Why think, “I am this.” or “I am that?” If you want to have a thought at all and you cannot live without thinking, then have this supreme thought: “I am Brahman.” This is the exercise which is nearest to your goal of Brahman itself. The meditator and the meditated upon will vanish. This is the goal that we started meditation for. No other sadhana or exercise is as near as this for one who wants to be free of this samsara, from this going again and again from death to birth and birth to death. This is how to break the cycle. There is only one way and this is this way. This can continue always wherever you are.

Being one of those lame fellows who doesn't “get it” the first time, who needs some kind of practice, this felt appealing. I have not been very big on the recitation of the Mahavakyas, the “Great truths” practice, but something about it seemed right and good and natural now. So I wondered if this too was worth practicing.

When I woke from this restaurant dream I couldn't help thinking about Poonja Swami and these teachings of his, and after a while something seemed to click. I of course thought about Self-enquiry, and how it relates to these other “mantras”. It seemed that there's a complimentary relationship between them, that Self-enquiry is not really different from them in its basic emphasis on feeling into the sense of self, of “I”, and what is beyond the “I”. So I began to practice Self-enquiry, and then practice these matras, saying “I am Brahman” and “I am free”. Or using a more English translation, saying “I am Infinite Consciousness” or “I am the Supreme Being”, or even the Sanskrit 'Aham Brahmasmi”. All this seemed fine. After a little while, it seemed as if there were a natural progression of sort here, that I could begin by asking “Who am I?”, then after a pause (short or long) say the invocation “I am Brahman” (or one of its correlates), and then say, “I am free”. This seemed to have a very positive effect altogether, bringing a deeper sense of peace and freedom and relaxation.

So I've been trying to practice in this format since then:

1)Who am I?

2)I am Brahman

3)I am free

I don't feel any need to be strict about the order. I still feel that enquiry is primary, and of course Self-enquiry doesn't require the verbal question “Who am I?”. It merely requires a feeling investigation of the self-sense, the feeling of “I”, of identity. When this feeling of identity becomes strong and prominent, it then feels appropriate to say “I am Brahman,” and “I am free”. And sometimes I just practice the Mahavakya “I am Brahman”. For now it is all just experimental in any case, but it feels already like a good experiment.

What Comes Around Goes Around

I notice it's been over a year since I last posted here. That may change now.

I think I just needed to clear my system. I've been doing the usual forum posting over at Lightmind, but let's be honest, it's just habit keeping me going there, and probably a bad habit at that. Now that Tom is shutting things down over there, I've been forced to face up to this, and think about what I want to do. One possibility is to just stop messing around on the internet entirely. Or, get involved with the new Ning sites that are opening up. I wonder, however, if it's just time for me to stop playing the back and forth games I get into on forums. I don't think it does me much good anymore, and my life is going through changes that make most of that kind of dialog obsolete. So the question is, what suits me now?

I turned 50 last week, and it's clear to me that my life is moving in a different direction. I've always kept in mind the fact that my life has reflected, at least in a general sense, the Vedic stages of life, which is composed of four distinct phases of spiritual practice: Brahmacharya, Householder, Hermitage, and Sanyas, each reputedly lasting 25 years. My first 25 years of life were clearly a Brahmacharya phase. I became strongly interested in spirituality when I was 13, and oriented myself towards that kind of disciplined life all the way through my youth. At 25, I met my wife, settled down, had a family, earned a living, and lived my spiritual practice in a householder setting. I've been aware for years that my householder life is coming to an end, and that means I would soon begin the "Hermitage" phase of life.

And low and behold, that's been happening quite spontaneously. Events have led me to live in a forest setting in Humboldt County, living on a rural property in the redwoods, ten acres nicely fenced and private, with few neighbors, all the seclusion I need, and yet all the basic amenities of an ordinary life. My kids have gone off to college, and though they still visit regularly, my wife and I are very much on our own now. I still work of course, but I do so at home, keeping my own schedule, and I have a great deal of freedom to do as I like. What I find I like, is to simply settle into a form of spiritual practice that is natural and sattvic.

So what I've been thinking of doing is simply keeping a blog that describes my spiritual practice in this "hermitage" context, and my thoughts about spirituality altogether, and whatever else seems relevant. For several years I have been experienting with Self-enquiry, and studying it, and trying to put it into practice, and I think it would be interesting to put my experiment with it into this blog, especially now that it feels like I can settle into this practice in a more dedicated and undistracted way. Some people might find that interesting, and might offer some helpful hints as well. But I don't think I want to get into the kinds of debating exchanges that I've had on the forums out there. I'm not interested in promoting anything, or arguing anything. I think I've had my fill of that, and I don't think I want to perpetuate those inclinations any more. They've served their usefullness, and now it's time to move on.

So I think I will experiment with this blog again, and see if I can turn it into something that is useful for me. I doubt it will be very interesting to many other people, unless they have a strong interest in Self-enquiry and related practices and considerations. I plan to be immensely boring to everyone else. Don't say you weren't warned. Of course, I don't think anyone is reading this blog anyway. Blogger reports that I get about 4 hits a day, and that's probably just accidental surfers.

So let the wild rumpus begin! Okay, maybe not so wild, and not much of a rumpus. Just a quiet place to talk about the practice of self-enquiry.

More on Adi Da and NPD

Yesterday's post on Adi Da and NPD got a good comment from Kang. It brings up some issues I've thought about in this area since yesterday, so I'll use it as an opportunity to expand ont he points I've made.

kang wrote:
Hi BY,

I'm wondering if the NPD diagnosis is really a meaningful criticism of the guy in this context. If you admit he's an advanced yogi and a genius, that automatically puts him in a category beyond conventional judgement, doesn't it? Not that I'm defending him. But what I really quesiton is these other assertions -- yogi, genius, guru.

If these are valid, then certainly there will always be some people who will overlook the behavioral depravities. We can grant that these are terrible and repulsive. All right, but that's not why anyone serious develops an interest in the whole Adidam thing. For those reasons I wouldn't go there nor recommend that anyone else should.

But if you admit there is some kind of extraordinary cream-filled core to this muffin, you leave open the door that some will be drawn in. Of course, we can find value in even negative experiences, but legitimately, is there really any kind of unique advantage to be found there?

Kang,

My reply:

I'm trying my best not to be political about this (meaning goal-oriented). In other words, I'm just trying to present and explore the truth to the best of my ability, regardless of the political consequences. If some people interpret what I say as suggesting that there is a "cream-filled core" to Adidam, and then join up as a result, I can't help that. I simply find the thought of adjusting my assessment of Adi Da and his group to engineer some kind of result, such as people not joining, repulsive. It's just the flip side of what Adidam itself does in trying to lure people into Adidam by presenting a manufactured, packaged image of Da.

Personally, I wouldn't say that what is creamy and delicious about Adidam is at its core. There's probably a better argument to be made that it is just a sugar-frosty coating that hides a rotten core. I could be wrong, of course, but I would suggest that denying that there is anything creamy and delicious about Adi Da is absurd and contrary to the simple factual experience of so many who have passed through Adidam, including me. It reminds me of the anti-drug propagandists who get up in arms when someone talks about how fucking amazing and pleasurable so many illegal drugs are. Some TV personality in England recently raised a big ruckus in an interview when he admitted to having used ecstasy once years ago, and saying it was just fantastic. Many people lamblasted him for giving the wrong impression to our youth, who might try ecstasy based on his admission. This is a tacit proposition that lying is better for the public good than telling the truth. It's a proposition I reject, especially in regard to Adidam.

I've previously compared Adidam to heroin, in that it can feel incredibly good, but it can easily lead to addiction, degradation of one's faculties, and a general degeneration of the being. One doesn't lick heroin by pretending it doesn't feel great. One has to understand that part of its danger is that it really does feel great. And one also has to be honest about the facts of drugs. Heroin, for example, in its pure pharmaceutical form, is actually less dangerous and debillitating than alcohol, the commonly accepted and promoted legal drug of choice in our country. Medical doctors will admit, if pressed, that it's much healthier to be addicted to pharmaceutical heroin than it is to alcohol. Not that this makes heroin an overall positive, but it helps put criticism of it into perspective. There are many things in our society which are negative, and some of them get promoted while others get made into scapegoats.

I'm not interested in scapegoating Adi Da, in other words, by pretending that everything about him is terrible and pathetic. That would actually help his cause, in that people like yzy who encounter Adi Da and find some very positive spiritual aspects to him will see then that the critics of Da are lying, just as anti-drug propagandists are found out to be lying by those who actually try many illegal drugs, and both end up losing credibility. It's more important to understand the complexity of people like Da than it is to paint everything about him with a negative brush.

As for the NPD diagnosis, I think it is meaningful in understanding Adi Da's basic problems and why they are not only personal, but systemic throughout his teaching and community. I don't think that even if Adi Da is assessed to be a great yogi and a genius that it puts him beyond conventional categories of judgement. To use the most extreme example, isn't it obvious that Hitler was a genius, and perhaps even a yogi of a kind? He certainly displayed the most incredible political and diplomatic skills of the 20th century, and had an amazing power to inspire and motivate people in a manner than Adi Da can't even approach. I hardly think any sane person would argue that Hitler's genius puts him beyond conventional categories of judgement. Clearly, Hitler is one of the great poster boys for NPD, and despite his genius, his incredible narcissism essentially defined his character, his actions, and the uses he put his genius to.

The whole notion that genius and people of great ability, even great spiritual ability, can't be judged "conventionally", is a huge part of the delusion these exceptional NPD types not only create, but actively take advantage of. Understanding the dynamics of NPD goes a long way towards exploding this myth by seeing how the narcissistic personality creates this "special" category for himself, and thus feels justified in using other, lesser beings as objects in his great game of self-aggrandizing accomplishment.

Take Napoleon for example. A lay term for NPD is the "Napoleonic complex", and we all know of crazy people who fantasize that they are Napoleon. Most are pathetic dysfunctional people who in no way had Napoleon's genius or talent. But what of Napoleon himself? Does the fact that Napoleon was a genius with tremendous talent, ability, and accomplishment make him any less an example of NPD? I think not. I think it's pretty obvious that Napoleon suffered immensely from NPD, and that he just happened to possess the genius and talent to actually accomplish an incredible amount. He wasn't fantasizing that he was the Emporer of France, but that achievement was a part of his NPD fantasy nonetheless, simply realized. And then, of course, tragically undone by his own NPD self-aggrandizement. This is a man who led 600,000 of his countrymen to their deaths in the invasion of Russia (and untold numbers of Russians) and yet who showed no remorse for their deaths at all, only for his own tragic fall. They were just props and bit players in his NPD drama.

And a similar pattern holds true for Adi Da. He's not capable of the kinds of achievements of Hitler or a Napoleon, but in the small pond of Adidam he is an even bigger fish, at least in his own mind, and in the minds of most of his followers. He has no conscience about using those followers as cannon-fodder in advancing his own personal star-power drama, and no remorse about any "collateral damage" suffered. His NPD is not excused by his genius and talent, it is merely the guiding principle behind its use.

That is the real answer to the "creamy core" issue, at least as far as I can see. Talent and genius are really peripheral to life's core matters. The tragedy of the NPD character is that he has made these peripheral matters of primary importance in his life, and ignored what really matters - love, truth, happiness, kindness. The NPD character epitomizes the hollowness of not only spiritual seeking, but spiritual attainment. They gain the whole world, at least in their own minds, but they have lost their soul in the process. And that is what I would criticize most about Adi Da and Adidam - they have lost their souls in the effort to become the "greatest of all time", or followers thereof.

I'm sure you can think of other examples of "great" figures with NPD. Artists like Gaugin or Picasso come to mind. One cannot deny their genius, their talent, and their acheivements, but as human beings, they suffered immensely from narcissistic problems. I don't know if they'd meet the full criteria for NPD, but clearly they were in the ballpark. Should we judge Gaugin any less of an asshole because he was such a talented painter? Likewise, should we judge him any less talented a painter because he was such an asshole? I think the notion that greatness or foulness in one category should affect our ability to judge in another category is a false idea. We can judge Gaugin as both a great painter and an asshole, and leave it at that.

Similarly, I think we can judge Adi Da's teachings and yogic ability on their own merits and demerits, and judge his character on its own merits and demerits as well. I see no problem judging him a yogic powerhouse and a flawed genius, and at the same time assessing him as afflicted with NPD. Neither tell the full story of the man, but both are true enough to be said. Now many judge even his yogic abilities and mental and artistic abilities on a rather low, even dark, scale. I can't necessarily argue with that. But even so, so many of us have experienced so much greatness and beauty in him that it's just not that simple for us to utterly condemn the man. In that sense, he really is a tragic figure. Like Napoleon, many had pinned their hopes on Adi Da as a potentially great and liberating figure. That he disappointed is not merely the result of chance and circumstance, or of the principle that "power corrupts", but of an underlying character problem that I think is well described in the NPD phenomena.

Most NPD geniuses end up as tragic figures, even when they accomplish a great deal. They often die sad and alone. I think it is an illusion that they cannot be judged as NPD simply because they were also geniuses of a kind. Great mental ability, even great spiritual insight and understanding, are simply not enough on their own. There must also be penetration of the core ego-illusion, or there is great danger of narcissistic inflation into the NPD dead end. Many people have a hard time seeing their charismatic genius heroes as suffering from something as basic as NPD, but they suffer from common colds and diarrhea and heart attacks like the rest of us, why not NPD?

One of the tragic problems in a group like Adidam is that people imagine that someone who seems as smart or accomplished as Adi Da couldn't possibly suffer from NPD. Similar problems arise around Ken Wilber, say, who some seem to think also suffers from NPD. Similarly with Andrew Cohen, Bonder, and others of that ilk. Spiritual seeking tends to attract people with latent or overt NPD, and the temptation to declare oneself enlightened, or the greatest of enlightened beings, is a powerful temptation to the NPD character. So spiritual groups tend to attract NPD types, and those with the most powerful NPD personaes tend to rise to the top and end up as Gurus.

Not that all spiritual Gurus are NPD types, by all means, but the problem seems to exist at virtually every level of spirituality and religion, just as it does in the arts and politics and business. Wherever there is the capacity to inflate the ego and create a potent self-image, narcissists will flock to the scene and try to rise up the ladder. And so we all need to be well-informed and aware of the phenmomena, both in ourselves and others, and not be fooled by it.

As for Adi Da, I think it's important to understand the precise nature of his depravities. They are not random and unfocused. In Adidam of course he is considered to be guided by "Crazy Wisdom", an inexplicable form of skillful means which defies all conventional categories - or so it is claimed. For a long time I accepted this and even argued this. But at a certain point I began to question just how wise and just how skillful his means were. Then I began to notice that there was a specific pattern to his "craziness", that it obeyed an internal logic that was not unconventional at all, but deadeningly conventional. In short, his "craziness" falls very precisely into the NPD pattern, not into some pattern of Divine God-intoxication. Why should that be? Is God-Realization a form of NPD? If one accepts Adi Da as the ultimate example of God-Realization, it would appear so. But I think it's far more likely that Da is just an example of someone with NPD who has tried to scale the heights of spiritual attainment, and even gotten quite far, but fallen tragically short, and destroyed himself in the process.

This is really a very old story, but it keeps repeating itself over and over again, in every time and place. And yet human beings such as ourselves are so surprised to see it happen each time that they try to come up with some mystical explanation that subverts common sense and human frailty. I think we have to understand that even genius and talent are not sufficient to protect us from the ravages of narcissism. We need to accept our vulnerability to narcissism, both form within and without, and be humbled by that.

The problem with the true NPD character, as yzy pointed out, is that they will never seek treatment. They will never even acknowledge their problem. Instead, they will always project their problem onto those around them. Hence, there really doesn't seem to be any hope for Adi Da. He cannot face up to his problems, but instead blames everything around him, even the whole world, for his own failure to communicate. Not everyone is curable. Many psychopathologies simply have no solution. We need to be aware of that also, and deal with such people without fantasizing that they will change or evolve into something better. For years I stayed on in Adidam in the hope that things would change, that Adi Da would change, that the community would change. It was a vain hope based on my own misunderstanding of the nature of the problem Recognizing the nature of NPD and recognizing it in Adi Da and his community helped me to see that my only real choice was to leave and start over on my own with a more serious understanding of narcissism than is taught within Adidam. Not easy, to be sure, but far preferable to the alternative.

Adi Da and Narcissistic Personality Disorder

A reader has made a lengthy comment on the discussion from the previous post that I thought was deserving of a full reply. Here's the comment in full, followed by my reply:

Dear Conrad,

I am wondering whether you realized the seriousness of your accusation against Adi Da and Adidam. If Adidam is indeed a congregation consisting mostly of narcissists and co-narcissists, then it would be a living hell indeed. Anybody with any sense of normalcy will not be able to survive there for any length of time. If I take your accusations as being true then I have to infer that you must be a very bad case co-narcissist to be able to hang in there for so long.

Narcissism occurs at the rate of 1 in a hundred, so it is not as common as you made it. I am serious when I said that it is almost impossible to recover from narcissism; it amounts to a minor miracle. If you have any doubts, please consider the following references:
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http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/beyond.html
Narcissists are generally not candidates for conventional analytical treatment, since psychological analysis is a dialogue and narcissism is a soliloquy. Because of narcissists' incapacity for genuine relationship, their treatment tends to be of the "Band-Aid" variety that deals with specific acute difficulties, such as depression, which can be treated with drugs. Part of Narcissistic Personality Disorder is the conviction is that "I'm okay, it's everybody else who's not okay," so narcissists rarely seek treatment voluntarily. Some wait until they are in such bad shape that they require hospitalization. Because narcissists' self-image is so scanty and fragile, they depend on the reflection of themselves in others' perception to be aware of themselves; sometimes it is really as if these people do not have bodies, have no real material existence. Therefore, social isolation, such as comes following the loss of a job, the failure of a marriage, or the alienation of friends and family, has swift and terrible effects on narcissists. Their thinking quickly deteriorates into chaotic incoherency and disorganization. For this reason, when they do receive treatment, the therapists' first order of business is to restore and fortify the narcissists' ego defenses -- i.e., the therapist must help the narcissist recover the habitual grandiose and self-obsessed self-image. When reasonably recovered, the narcissist usually leaves therapy before any work can be done on the underlying personality disorder.

http://mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=479&cn=8
If possible, long-term individual psychotherapy is the treatment of choice for those with narcissistic personality disorder because it helps to establish a strong therapeutic alliance between therapist and patient. Yet, even within this framework, expectations should focus on small changes in personality traits as opposed to expecting large changes as being possible…

http://www.toad.net/~arcturus/dd/narc.htm
… many individuals with NPD will come for treatment only under considerable duress... but once the pressure is removed or the pain of the event lessened, these individuals usually leave treatment without any desire to change essential characterological attributes. Sperry & Carlson (1993, p. 320) note that most individuals with NPD come into treatment with the goal of having their narcissistic wounds soothed rather than seeking change.
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So have you changed your assessments that Adidam are not a bunch of narcissist after all, just a bunch of mediocre people with some dumb ideas? But how dumb do you have to be to take 30 years to let go of some silly ideas?

I am more inclined to believe that you are not that dumb, as in taking 30 years to let go of a bunch of silly ideas, that you are not a narcissist either but neither is Adi Da. It does look to me that there is something else going on that kept you there for so long. I find it impossible to get past your anger and inconsistencies to really know whether it is the case.

Spiritual practice/community is difficult – past, present and for the foreseeable future. Putting a bunch of people who otherwise would have nothing to do with each other together, heaps on the spiritual demand, stirs up the samskara (purifications) a bit, and you have a pressure cooker, a killing field. There is no comfort zone – either one moves forward on or drop out. Many dramas will get played out in the process.

The Sixth Patriarch having to run for his life after his master passed him the lineage in secret was a notable example from the past. I have also seen the worst of humanity displayed in a couple current day communities that I know quite intimately.

I would expect a level of bullshit and immaturity happening amongst the Adidam community. In fact I am almost seeing one happening right before my eyes in your exchanges with Victoria. Two ex-devotees tearing each other apart without mercy, one defending her ex-guru, one criticizing. I can imagine how the scenes were when both of you were devotees. Perhaps you have never considered that you could be a contributing factor to the ugliness?

The real question to me is whether there are any maturing devotees. And that is probably not so easy to ascertain from a distance.

Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t have any personal agenda against you. I am only using you as a sounding board in my probe for the truth about Adidam. You were chosen because you are currently the loudest anti-Adi Da voice.

I am not sure whether you realized how intertwined you are with Adi Da with your 30 years involvements, being his court astrologer, and once the most outspoken defender etc. Whatever bad things you have to say about Adi Da reflects equally badly on yourself. Saniel Bonder and Ken Wilber are on the same boat as you, and that is probably why both choose to say very little about their ex-guru publicly. There may be some wisdom that you can learn from them.

Lastly – I am impressed with Adi Da not merely because of the philosophical depth. I am more impressed with the stillness and equanimity in which he sits and conducts himself. It portrays someone who has mastered of the body rather than someone who lead a life of gross indulgences. The most impressive of all is the amount of silence – I got a distinct impression that silence is the real communications and words are rather inconsequential interruptions. There is much to investigate, that all I can say now.

I think I have pretty much come to an end in my excursion in your forum. I wish you all the best in your future undertakings.

yzy

This is my reply to yzy:

Dear yzy,

There's a lot to respond to in your post. I'll try to be thorough. If you have further comments or questions, I'd be glad to respond as needed.

First let me say that I'm not interested in insulting you or Adi Da or anyone associated with Adidam, such as Victoria from the last post. I'm sorry you see me as someone out for blood, and I would ask you to reconsider that assessment of me, but if you can't, so be it. I'm interested in getting at the truth of the matter of Adidam, just as you are. If some people find the truth to be intolerable, that simply can't be helped. If I am wrong about Adidam, then God help me by pointing out where and how I am wrong. But if I am right, then God help you and others involved in Adidam face up to that truth. My basic assumption through all this is that truth is not insulting, and so if we try to stick to the truth, we will be incapable of insulting one another. I sense that you are cognizant of subtleties involved in this kind of exchange, and for what it's worth I don't mind being used as a sounding board if that is how you wish to proceed.

I've said this dozens of times before, but it bears repeating: I'm not interested in dissuading anyone from joining or staying in Adidam. To the contrary, to those who have a strong attraction to Adi Da, by all means go right ahead and join, and give it your best shot. But those who join Adidam should be aware of the realities of Adidam, its cultic limitations, and its peculiar, problematic aspects. Likewise, people should be aware of the positive aspects of Adidam, and place them in context. I certainly wouldn't be the first to point out what is positive in Adidam, but I wouldn't be the last either. As you mention, I was involved with Adidam for the better part of 30 years, and I wouldn't have done so if there hadn't been plenty of positives to have kept me around.

As for Adi Da being an impressive figure, I second the opinion. I have never met a more impressive person in my life – not that I've met a great many exceptional people. Unlike some critics of Adi Da, I don't try to make him out to be an ordinary fraud or psychotic. I think it's clear that he has exceptional yogic and spiritual qualities, as well as genius-level intelligence, and remarkable insight into people and events. What I would argue is that none of that is incompatible with my assessment of him as a narcissist.

Your description of narcissism lacks an appreciation of both the wide variance within clinical narcissism and the breadth of the phenomena on a personal and cultural level in our day and age. You mention that clinical narcissism (NPD) is rare, about 1 in 100. I've heard estimates of between 1-3 in 100, but even at the lower end, NPD is not really all that rare. However, I in no way am suggesting that Adi Da is a typical, 1 in 100 narcissist. Many narcissists, as you suggest, are rather pathetic people with tremendous difficulties in life and relationships. But there exist quite a number of what might be called “high-functioning” narcissists who have exceptional abilities, charisma, and talent, who often rise very high in the social order, and who do not appear to the casual observer to be clincial narcissists. They may be actors, politicians, artists, businessmen, doctors, lawyers or scientists of the highest caliber and achieve great success and recognition in their field. And yet they are often brought down by their own narcissistic character, negating so much of what they have achieved. Or not – many manage to get through life without their narcissism being revealed beyond the small sphere of their immediate associates. This, I would suggest, would be the case with Adi Da if not for those who have spoken out about the realities of his own life and character.

Likewise, you misunderstand what I mean when I describe Adidam as filled with co-dependent personalities. I do not mean that Adidam is filled to bursting with clinical cases of NPD. Not only would that be highly unlikely (and a hell on earth) it simply wouldn't last. People with true NPD simply can't tolerate being surrounded by too many other people with NPD – the competition for attention would be too vicious and intolerable. Instead, NPD people tend to surround themselves with willing co-dependent types who will support and serve their own narcissism. Such co-dependency is a form of narcissism, to be sure, but not of the classic variety. It is sometimes called “compensating narcissism.” Authoritarian organizations tend to be filled with compensating narcissists who sublimate their own will and identity to the leader's will and persona. They live for and through the leader. They may even seem to be selfless and altruistic individuals, self-sacrificing and devoted to a cause and a purpose outside themselves, but in reality they are simply playing out another aspect of the narcissistic fantasy.

Which brings up a larger point about narcissism, which is that while clinical NPD is relatively rare, narcissistic personality problems are virtually epidemic in our time and culture. Alexander Lowen, who was one of the earliest psychiatrists to recognize and treat common narcissistic personality disorders (read his “Narcissism: Denial of the True Self” for a great short introduction to his work on the subject), suggested that while in Freud's time and culture most people who came to psychiatrists for help were suffering from neurotic disorders, in our age the most common ailments people suffer from are related to narcissistic issues. So while most of Freud's theories and techniques were built on the observation of neuroses, psychiatry in our age and culture, according to Lowen, needs to develop theories and methods for treating narcissism – not just of the NPD variety, which remains rare, but of the more common variety.

When I describe Adidam as riddled with narcissism, I am speaking of it in all these respects: an exceptional, high-functioning NPD Guru, a loyal, bureaucratic following of compensating narcissists, and a horde of people struggling with ordinary issues of narcissism and co-dependency. Sprinkled through Adidam are an assortment of genuine NPD characters, in far higher proportions than you would find in the general population, but using the masks of religious authority to hide their disorder. Nonetheless, they remain the exception rather than the rule, and yet they function to manage and organize the commonplace narcissists and co-dependents who populate Adidam.

I would further suggest that all these varieties of narcissists are commonly attracted to religious and spiritual groups, especially those which foster authoritarian and absolutist beliefs. Adidam is far from unique in that respect. One could point to any number of both mainstream and “cult” religious movements as being similarly riddled with narcissists, though I hardly think that excuses Adidam in any way. The fact that Adidam is purportedly lead by an enlightened being, and that it teaches the way to become enlightened oneself, in no way guarantees that it is free of narcissistic exploitation and conflict. In fact, I would argue that movements that aspire to enlightenment or which make such claims are more likely to have narcissistic issues than groups with more mundane aspirations.

Now, you are right that accusing Adi Da of having NPD is a serious charge. I don't make it lightly. I don't even make it out of disrespect, the way one might accuse someone we don't like of being “psycho”. What I mean is that I don't see any other way of accurately describing Adi Da's personality issues, or of explaining the peculiar dynamics of his relationships, his organization, and his spiritual legacy. So let's get down to the basics of that charge, using the basic criteria for recognizing NPD, as described in Wikipedia (which seems to correspond well to every other source I've seen, including DSM-IV):

At least five of the following are necessary for a diagnosis [of Narcissistic Personality Disorder]:

1.has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2.is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3.believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by other special people
4.requires excessive admiration
5.strong sense of entitlement
6.takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7.lacks empathy
8.is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her.
9.arrogant affect

Now, I don't know how much you know about Adi Da, but it should be fairly obvious to anyone with just a bit of experience in Adidam, or knowledge thereof, to see that Adi Da fits not just five of these criteria, but all nine, and not just to some borderline degree, but in spades, in excess of virtually any possible way of looking at the matter. I've spoken to Daists about this, and the best defense they can come up with is that sure, the criteria seem to fit, but since Adi Da is without any ego, none of these personal characteristics of his can amount to narcissism. If you buy that argument, good luck to you in Adidam.

If you need some background on these criteria, let me fill in just a little bit of detail. One could go on and on about it, but I don't want to stand accused of piling on.

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance

If you've read The Dawn Horse Testament, you perhaps have some idea of just how grandiose Adi Da's sense of his own importance is. In short, he believes himself to be THE most important being ever to have been born, not just in our time and place, but in all times, in all places, in the entire universe, in all the billions of years it has existed. He doesn't just mean this figuratively, but literally. His “bodily human form” as he calls it, is the most perfect manifestation of the Divine that has ever appeared, and is the sole means for the complete liberation of all beings, in all times and places, forever. There will never be another being as important as him, no realizer more important, no Vehicle of the Divine as significant. If one has any doubt about how important Adi Da thinks he is, count the number of capitalized words in The Dawn Horse Testament. One wonders if it is even possible for anyone, anywhere, to fulfill this criteria for NPD more fully and perfectly than Adi Da.

2.is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

Adi Da has spent years and years obsessing about the vast successes that he not only insists his “Work” will achieve, but which he demands on a daily and hourly basis. In every area of his life, he fantasizes about ridiculous levels of adulation, respect, power, wealth, sexual satisfaction, personal achievement, artistic creation, on and on. For years he fantasized about the rich and famous coming to him and working with him not only to advance Adidam's position in the world, but to work with him on creative projects of his own devising. For example, he has fantasized for years about making movies with the most famous and successful people in Hollywood, from Jim Carrey to Michael Jackson to Steven Spielberg. He compiled a set of “movie ideas” that he wanted brought to these people, and he expected them to not only embrace him as his Guru, but to embrace him as a creative genius and moviemaker. I worked with him on this “project” at one time, and he personally asked me to approach Steven Spielberg to work with him on these movie ideas of his. (I politely declined). These were not just idle fantasies, he spent years trying to get devotees to develop contacts in the movie industry, trying to work there way up through the network to these top guys.

Likewise, he has fantasized being recognized as the greatest artist of our time, and of any time, and the greatest photographer, the greatest painter, the greatest writer - and the greatest spiritual realizer, of course. You cannot imagine how obsessive he has been about this, how many hours and hours of notes he has given about how import it is that everyone in the world recognize and adore him, and you cannot imagine his rage and disappointment at the ongoing “failure” of his devotees and the whole world to properly recognize and support him.

3. Believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by other special people

Adi Da argues that he is the most “special” person in the world, utterly unique in all of time and space, in all of human and cosmic history. He even uses the word 'Unique”, full capitalized, over and over and over again to describe himself, or should I say, “Himself”. How many people not living in insane asylums actually refer to themselves as “Myself” over and over again, or speak the way Adi Da does about himself?

4.requires excessive admiration

We've covered this a bit, but let's just repeat that Adi Da repeatedly says that without the ongoing devotion and gifts of his devotees, he will literally die. His demand for devotional recognition and praise is simply so over the top one just can't deny it. His anger and rage over the slightest lapse in devotion, his inability to accept even the mildest of criticism, and his total denial that he is even capable of error make this category easy to check off.

5.strong sense of entitlement

Adi Da clearly feels entitled to virtually anything he desires. The entire organization of Adidam essentially exists to fulfill Adi Da's personal wants and desires, and in his view this is not only justified, but is the way for all being to realize perfect enlightenment. Since his wants and desires are the wants and desires of the Divine Person, and since the Divine Person wants only the enlightenment of all beings, fulfilling Adi Da's wants and desires leads to the enlightenment of all beings. The logic is perfect, no? Specifically, this means that if Adi Da wants something badly, he gets it, or he throws a tantrum and threatens to leave, to go into isolation, to disrupt everyone's life until it is given him. A few years ago he went to Yosemite Park, and he liked it so much he said the federal government should just give it to him as his own personal sanctuary residence. He's said that the world should give him $50 billion dollars just to build a series of “pleasure domes” for him to live in, the most fantastic palaces every built, merely to compensate him for the great work he is doing for the sake of all beings. On a more practical level, Adi simply demands the finest in food, sex, art, clothing, personal possessions, furnishings, photographic equipment, cars, housing, hotel accommodations, vacation outings, you name it, he gets it.

6.takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

Where does the money come from for all these things? Adi Da ran a series of fund-raisers to collect money to buy Disney Art and paperweights, raising about $5,000,000 over 2-3 years. People were encouraged to cash in their IRAs, their retirement accounts, borrow on their credit cards, etc., all to finance his fascination for useless collectibles. He deliberately told people to drink as much as it took during these fundraisers in order to facilitate their decision-making, telling people to keep drinking until it they had given enough for his latest purchases. And that's just one example of a pattern of using and abusing people over the decades. I can't tell you how many people have been used and abused and then discarded when they were no longer useful to Adi Da. When his original wife, Nina, was going through a very difficult time, after having supported him for years, both financially and emotionally, and after he just cut her off, she was invited to spend a bit of time with him, and asked if he would take her back into his inner circle. His response? He told her, “Nina, you don't understand. I don't need you anymore.” And that was that.

7.lacks empathy

Again, the examples are too numerous to choose from. My favorite is how he treated the devotees who lived on the island in Fiji. He was upset about the budget for the island eating into his swiss bank account, so he personally took control of the island's budget. He cut the food budget for the residents down to the bone, to about 60 cents per day per person. Things got so bad the residents began stealing food from the retreatants who came from the mainland. People developed malnutrition, serious health problems, dental problems, etc. Meanwhile, Adi Da had a personal chef and staff with a budget of thousands of dollars a month to prepare his own gourmet meals of lobster bisque and the fanciest foods they could get their hands on. At no time did Adi Da show any sign of empathy for those devotees who were literally starving right nearby.

Of course, I would not say that Adi Da lacks empathy entirely. He simply seems to exercise it only when it offers him some advantage. As a general personality characteristic, it seems absent.

8.is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her.

Adi Da's primary criticism of how devotees relate to him is that they all suffer from what he calls the “Oedipal complex”, which in his view means that they are all in competition with him, trying to outdo him, replace him, and “be his equal”. He has a compulsion to knock down any man around who shows too much competence, ability, intelligence or maturity. He seems not to care how much this costs Adidam, requires that no one represent anything that might remotely be seen as competition to his own authority and power. This is the report I get from those who have actually worked in and managed his personal sphere, and everything I've seen around him supports these reports.

9.arrogant affect

Well, what can I say? Judge for yourself. I'm a fairly arrogant guy myself, but to be honest, I've never met anyone who could match Adi Da in this category.

So, there you have. A perfect nine out of nine. I really have a hard time imagining how anyone could seriously contest the assessment of Adi Da as suffering from NPD based on these criteria. If you think differently, I'd like to hear about it.

I thought it interesting that you would comment:

“Part of Narcissistic Personality Disorder is the conviction is that "I'm okay, it's everybody else who's not okay," so narcissists rarely seek treatment voluntarily. Some wait until they are in such bad shape that they require hospitalization.”

Of course, this fits Adi Da to a “T”. He insists that everything that has ever gone wrong in Adidam is the fault of others, of devotees, of the world, everyone but himself. He has never, ever, accepted responsibility for anything that has gone wrong. However, he has taken credit for anything and everything that has done right, regardless of whether he had anything directly to do with it. If things go right, it is his Grace. If things go wrong, it is the fault of devotees obstructing his Grace. So Adi Da's basic message when anythign goes remotely wrong is always “I'm okay, everyone else isn't.

“Because narcissists' self-image is so scanty and fragile, they depend on the reflection of themselves in others' perception to be aware of themselves; sometimes it is really as if these people do not have bodies, have no real material existence.”

Adi Da also repeatedly goes through crises where he says that his connection to this world, and his own body, is so tenuous that he can drift away at any time. The only corrective for this is personal devotion and pleasuring of his body-mind. Let your imagination run wild as to what that comes down to. He has had numerous panic attacks brought on by feelings of failure and collapse. He was on numerous anti-depressants for years. He has had drug and alchohol addictions for decades. Make of that what you will, but it all fits in perfectly with the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder.

The big question which I grappled with for a long time, and which you will have to grapple with if you join Adidam, is how all these obvious signs of severe NPD could coincide with someone who is also clearly a brilliant spiritual savant of a kind. For that, I have no fully convincing explanation to offer you. Many people have their theories, and I could float a few myself, but in the end they are rather beside the point. The point is the fact that these NPD problems clearly exist, and have a huge effect on everyone in Adidam. They will have an effect on you also, so you should take that into account when joining. Be aware that if you criticize Adi Da for any of these things, or ask too many questions about these matters, you will be labeled a heretic, as I was. You will have to choose whether to ignore these matters or leave Adidam. That's basically the deal.

As for how negatively these matters reflect on me, I offer no excuses, and I accept complete responsibility for my own involvement in Adidam. One of the most insightful criticisms I ever came across came from Poonja Swami, whom I began to read after leaving Adidam. When asked about deceitful and fraudulent Gurus, he said that there were no bad Gurus, there were only bad devotees. This is the opposite, of course, of what most critics of Gurus think. Personally, I think it is exactly true, in that without bad devotees there can be no bad Gurus. By that, I mean that a bad devotee is one who is not interested in truth for its own sake, but only for what he can get for himself. And my involvement in Adidam, to the degree that it was a negative experience, is a comment on my own corrupt desiring for something other than Truth. If I had truly been interested in Truth, I wouldn't have become so distracted by the inanities of Adidam. If there were no bad devotees, there would be no Adidam, therefore. He would have no one to abuse. So it is bad devotees who make bad Gurus. This isn't a way of excusing bad Gurus, or exploitive people altogether, but it is the only sane way I can see to approach the matter of one's own bad spiritual experiences with Gurus, communities, etc.

The primal delusion we face is our own delusion, ultimately, and so it is a bit beside the point to dwell endlessly on the tragi-comedic faults of Gurus like Adi Da. You asked, and I'm willing to describe these things as honestly as I can, but I can't pretend I much care anymore. My advice to you isn't really about Adi Da himself, but about your own search for truth. What matters is not who your teacher is, or what practices you engage, but how earnest and true you are in the midst of it all. If you have a karma to be involved with Adi Da, or with some other cultic Guru, then maybe it's what you need to do, as I certainly felt being involved with Adidam all those years was what I needed to do. But ultimately it doesn't really matter whether you join or not. It just matters that you come to the point of being truly honest with yourself and dealing with yourself directly and truthfully. For me, it seems that I needed to be involved with Adidam for almost three decades to get the point. If that reflects badly on me, so be it. I'm not bitching. In fact, I'm happy just to get this far. I have had to wrestle with my own narcissism, my own demons, and I'm glad to have made as much progress as I have. What's important to me about Adidam is not that I've left it, but that I no longer feel the need for it, or for any similar involvement. Without that need, how can I be exploited? So a whole level of fear and uncertainty has left me. It wasn't really a question of my involvement in Adidam. That was just a symptom of a problem I had not been willing to face up to. The real questions were always about me. And so they will always be.
I hope this has been useful to you. If you have any further questions, I'm happy to answer them. Adi Da's status as an NPD may be controversial within Adidam, but it seems fairly uncontested outside of that sphere. But again, it isn't really the most important issue. You may want to ask yourself why you are attracted to a Guru who has such obvious NPD characteristics, as I finally had to. Better late than never, but better sooner than later, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, thanks for the civilized discussion.

Conrad

Another County Hear From

Here's one woman's response to my blog:

Why waste time with all this bullshit, Conrad? You had a Guru once who is as True as they come. That he was/is a difficult man of undeniable complexity and contradiction does not make his Realization less than True. All the condescending remarks you make about Adi Da-or anyone else who makes such remarks-are just a sign of immaturity and immersion in your own self-importance. Like Ken W, your are angry that some actual Great Realizer didn't coddle you along. You guys all work so hard to prove with words and books and websites just how smart you are and how wrong God was to not see it.[Whether that is Adi Da, Papaji, Sri Lakshmana or the God in your dreams at night.] I don't need a PhD to see the charade... it is visible for all to see via the interminable lengths to which you go to defend your personal beliefs and ideas. Not just you, Conrad, but all the middle-aged ex-devotees of someone or other, who seem to NEED to express themselves on the internet. It's tragic that you are not bored with it all yet. I remember when you first came to the Community...you were rather innocently self-possessed then...young and overly impressed with your own intellectual intelligence. [Like a lot of guys were at the time.] You aren't so young now, nor is there anything remotely innocent about your self-possession. These forums are just another form of porn, Conrad. It's like jerking off in public again and again. Because there is no shame and no recognition of the Beloved--just an endless driven search for release. All of you guys just wagging your dicks at one another, pretending to be tolerant and forgiving. I'd rather see a good fist-fight. It would be far more honest and real considering where you are really at. You failed. You failed to REALLY fall in Love with God. You failed to go beyond your own tendencies...all the ones that keep you painfully identified with a personal self. You still espouse them vociferously in your writings. No one is really going to understand you, Conrad. No one really cares. I don't say this to be mean...it is simply the truth. The One you seek is on the other side of everything you are now commited to doing to justify your life and existence. All of these words and endless diatribes are just a symptom of your illness...ALL OF YOU, who go on and on, living in your heads but blah-bla-blahing about your hearts. You are all angry and insulted that God did not somehow recognize little old you and give you The Great Gift. You pretend humility...bull-shit again. If life had truly made you a humble man, you would not be wasting your time writing all this crap and think that quoting some Realizer, whom you never met,legitimizes your dumb ideas. Instead, you would be giving everything you've got to stoking the fire of your love for God. Even if it was only a little bit...a baby-step as it were. You would not care that the fire burns your precious personal identity. You would see that it is not the world that humiliates you, but that the real humiliation comes from watching the years go by and still refusing to let go of all the endless thinking and posturing. It's your own pain that keeps you going here and this blog epitomizes evrything you do to keep from feeling that pain. IT IS NOT THE TRUTH. You can write yourself into the grave, IT WILL NEVER BE THE TRUTH!!! You cling mightily to the very tendencies that prevent you from seeing this machine of suffering from the other side of the fence. I have not been a formal devotee of Adi Da's for 15 yrs...and yet the spiritual relationship never ended. It only got stronger over the years. He gave me Everything...again and again and again...he showed me what love is. He showed me that even the greatest blisses must be sacrificed in love. He showed me the great secret of being ordinary. The Fire still burns...I ain't done cookin yet. But I can tell you, you must find the joy in the utter ruination of all that you identify with as Conrad. There is such a freedom in just that much. It is not the final Realization, but it is the beginning of real sadhana and Self-respect. It is also a release from all the spriritual romanticism that has grown out of the ready availability of esoteric teachings in our generation. Stop all the mental masturbation. Figure out why you gave up the real fight. Good luck.

Love from another Victoria

I don't know who this woman is. I recall a Victoria from times past in Adidam, but never knew her well, and never formed an opinion of her. (My wife is named Victoria, so she's aware of that much about me). There's not much to say in response, except that this is an example of how the experience of having been in Adidam can twist a person in knots that they can't get out of without lashing at others. What's interesting to me is that someone who had actually stayed in Adidam would be very unlikely to respond with such hostility to my blog writings. But someone who had left Adidam, and yet remained a devotee - in their own mind at least - is often carrying powerful internal tensions and contradictions within themselves that burst out when they come across criticism of Adi Da.

There's a small but significant number of people like Victoria, who have left Adidam for all kinds of reasons that they may not be able to face up to, but who persist in thinking of Adi Da as their Guru, and they often react more strongly to criticism of Adi Da than actual members of Adidam. Why is this? My guess is that they have simply suppressed their own reactions to Adi Da, and Adidam, and cannot face up to why they left, but compensated for those reactions by becoming, in their own minds at least, the strongest advocates of Adidam. Joe Blanchete over at the Daism forum is a good example of this type. These people simply cannot face up to the fact that they left their Guru, they cannot face their own feelings of betrayal, their own negative response to Adi Da and Adidam, and so it all comes rushing out when someone criticizes Adi Da in any way.

Victoria's reaction is strange. Her primary motive seems to be to get me to shut up, to stop saying anything about Adi Da. Why the suppressive response? It's fairly obvious that she has been suppressing her own feelings about Adidam for a very long time, and she wants to enforce that on others as well. It's natural that she wouldn't much like my blog, but the intense reaction suggests that it hit a nerve in her, in her own negative feelings about Adidam that she's somehow been keeping beneath the surface all these years. She doesn't say why she left Adidam, but clearly there must have been something negative about the experience. What else could explain why she stays away from someone she loves and considers her Guru? Obviously she is deeply conflicted about Adidam, because everyone who's been in Adidam knows that Adi Da does not give permission for people to leave, and does not acknowledge anyone who leaves as his devotee. He only acknowledges formally practicing members of Adidam as his devotees. So Victoria is not his devotee, even if she likes to think of herself as one. She has to cope every day with the knowledge that her Guru feels that she has betrayed him, more deeply than I have even, since I no longer consider him my Guru. It's one thing for someone like me to leave and criticize, it's quite another for a loyal devotee like Victoria to do the same. And that creates a terrible tension in a person that can't abide encountering anything which might bring the conflict to the surface. Hence, massive suppression, not just of oneself, but of others as well.

What this kind of conflict does to a person is not pretty. Victoria thinks my tolerance and compassion are false and studied, so I won't try to offer my sympathies to her. But clearly she is in need of help and a place to open up and talk freely about her experience in Adidam, why she left, why she stays gone, and what her conflict with Adi Da is all about. This probably isn't the right place for that, but if she wants to give it a try, I'm open to it.

This is an example of the kind of harm many people who have been involved with Adidam suffer from. Much of it is unnecessary and can be resolved fairly easily by simply talking openly about it all, rather than suppressing these feelings. People do, even 15 years after leaving, suffer guilt, pain, hostility, and all sorts of suppressed emotions which they don't feel free to confess, so they project them onto convenient targets such as this blog. I know her criticism of me isn't personal, it's not even about me actually, it's about her own relationship to Adi Da. She's not got things right with him, or with herself. She has an idea of Adi Da in her mind that doesn't match up to the Adi Da who is actually alive and whom she once had a relationship with. Something about the Adi Da in her mind is very precious to her, and represents her own "God" as it were. She needs to know that I am not criticizing the God in her mind, but the man and the life she left long ago for reasons of her own choosing. The God in her mind is not Adi Da, though she continues to make that association. The God in her mind may be a much better God than Adi Da has been in life even, I don't criticize the God she has made Adi Da out to be. I simply criticize the man who has tried to make a God of himself, and used that God to gain a hold on people's minds. Obviously he gained a hold on Victoria's mind that even 15 years later still retains its grip. She should free herself from that grip on her mind, and let her mind be free of it all - for her own sake, not for me or any other "hostile" ex-devotees.

Unless Victoria chooses to return to Adidam, she really ought to just let go of Adi Da and let herself be free of his imposition on her mind. At least I think she'd be better off that way. Obviously she has tried to develop a spiritual life on her own, and the image of Adi Da is only an obstruction at this point, one she could be free of simply by recognizing it as a relic of her past, not a reality of her present. As Da himself once said, once you recognize something as garbage, you have no choice by to throw it away, and everything the Guru gives you is garbage. So Victoria's problem is simply that she doesn't recognize her attachment to this image of Adi Da as garbage, but continues to hold onto it even 15 years after the fact. What a heavy burden to carry around. Wouldn't she feel so much lighter without that load on her shoulders? People do become attached to their suffering, however, and it's not always so easy to let it go. It's understandable that she needs to vent, even at me. But it's even more important that she recognize that it's not me she's angry at. It's someone much closer to her heart.

Da Prophecies

A reader wrote a comment below somewhere (I don't know where exactly; blogger emails me all comments, but it doesn't tell me what post they were made under - it could be from a post written some time ago):

George Feurstein has updated his classic work 'Holy madness'recently (2006). The chapter on Adi Da has been revised significantly. The author mentions the so called 'Lopez Island Event' which occured in the Year 2000. According to him Da had prophesised that the world would acknowledge him in the year 2000. As a result of this, Da suffered a mental breakdown around April 2000 due to high level of anxiety. Yet I have never seen this prophesy in any of the Dawn Horse produced books/articles prior to yr 2000. I wonder if this is a myth propagated by disgruntled ex devotees. Where is the proof that Da actually made this prophesy?

I couldn't point you to any "proof" that Adi Da ever made this prophecy. It certainly wasn't published in the literature anywhere. But only a small fraction of what Adi Da has ever said has been published. I certainly heard from his kanyas that he made such a prediction, and as his "court astrologer" I was asked whether I saw something like this in his chart. I said that no, I didn't see any corroboration in his astrological chart for this sort of thing, and obviously it never happened. I'm not sure when the prediction was actually made, or what the exact wording of it was. One fallback position Da always takes in relation to such things is that he claims most of his work is invisible, and will only make a manifest appearance much, much later. So I would gather that when he didn't become world famous in 2000 that he pointed to the Lopez event, which he claimed represented the most important "event" in the history of the universe, as being the basis for his "world fame" that will eventually make its appearance. He has of course said suchthings before. Back in early 1974 he claimed that he was transforming himsef, the community, the world, and the entire cosmos in a way that would change everything forever, and it would culiminate in July of 1974. Of course nothing much happened then, but he claimed that it was like the "Dawn Horse" dream of his - that the essential work had now been done, and the appearance of that work would occur somewhere down the line. We are all still waiting.

George might know more about this prediction. My sense was that it was originally made long before 2000, and had become something of a legend in the community by then. So if you want to know more of the specifics, I'd suggest you ask him. But no, my basic understanding is that it was not something invented by disgruntled ex-devotees to embarrass Da. He has a long history of making predictions that don't actually come true, except in his own interior sense of reality. Much room for cognitive dissonance to operate there. There's not much need to invent things to embarrass Da - he has provided virtually endless material for such things from the beginning of his teachings, and even before.

Note: SOory about the lack of posting of late, particularly regarding Andy Smith's piece. Just overloaded with things to do. Will get to it soon. Like Da's prophecies, I've already written it in my mind, it just has to manifest. World fame will inevitably follow.

Still Here, Still Thinking of You

To those few out there who've been checking in, my apologies at the light blogging of late. I've just been very busy of late. But I've been thinking of lots of things I want to write about. In particular, I want to make a response to Andy Smith's long paper on non-dualism and developmentalism over at Integral World that is in part based on ideas I've presented here and at the Wilber Forum. I'd like to write a long paper, but the more I think about it, the longer it becomes, and thus the harder to begin. So instead I think I will just begin posting a series of bits and pieces that can perhaps later be assembled into a longer paper for Integral World. Maybe it never gets that far, but at least the ideas get addressed. Smith's paper is worth a good response in any case, and the issues he brings up are menaingful to me - particularly the issue of what constitutes non-dualism. I intend to give both a rational and a "visionary" response that gives a fuller context for how I see these things. Hope I can begin this tommorrow. If not, very soon at least. Thanks for bearing with me.