social events. They also provide instruction in understanding one’s personality, accessing
childhood memories through breathing or painting or writing, applying spiritual laws of success
to family and workplace, finding truth in an exotic leader who may soon be visiting, and
techniques of spiritual sex, all the while subtly affirming their particular ideology. In many cases,
these teachings not only fail to challenge limited ideas of self but indirectly reinforce them.
Promotional methods of many such movements and devotional organizations can be confusing
or misleading, as well. Esoteric words like infinite, supreme, divine, eternal, enlightenment,
awakening, spirit, blessed, transcendent, truth, bliss, and God are used to sell publications and
instructional programs that purport to point the way to truth. But instead of clarifying the
questions humanity faces, spiritually tantalizing terminology might further obscure today’s social
challenges. At best, such idioms may help adherents overcome the extreme divisiveness of
organized religions and, through this wider lens, realize a healthier ego freed from trauma and
issues of inferiority. More often, they are mixed into teachings calling for blind faith in prescribed
dogma and subtly exclusionary beliefs that later fuel conceited attitudes.
When the self is pronouncedly vulnerable, it searches for its infinitude less in spiritual and
devotional organizations and more in prefabricated cultic identities that quickly lend a sense of
stability. Cults are characterized primarily by zealous glorification of a leader, economic or
sexual exploitation of members, and physical or mental harm inflicted on them. Of these traits,
personality worship is likely the most destructive since it entrains followers’ minds to accept the
exploitation and abuse. And unlike focusing on a nonliving object of devotion that embodies
universal qualities, focusing devotionally on the image of a living person who has attained the
status of a godlike savior can narrow one’s perspective. Worse, identifying with such a
charismatic individual can scar the psyche by stripping it of the self-esteem necessary for
expansion.
Damage to the psyche became obvious during the counterculture decades of the 1960s and
1970s, when the Western world began deifying Eastern gurus and meditation masters.
Obsessed with worshipping these personalities, Westerners started clinging to the individuals’
identities rather than expanding their own. Also, uneducated in the complexities of Eastern
thought, they naturally considered the teachings to be authentic, only to find in many instances
that the person lacked ethical conduct. But rather than questioning a teacher’s credibility, many
followers opted for delusion, justifying the immoral behavior by claiming the individual was one
with God, enlightened, no longer subject to everyday morality, or was using immorality as a
teaching aid or to intentionally challenge social conventions. Next, they surrounded themselves
with an impregnable wall of denial, demonizing anyone who challenged their leader’s stature
and all the while trapping themselves in feelings of codependence and helplessness. Before
long, hundreds of thousands of Westerners mistakenly believed their self-worth was assured by
the worthiness of their teacher.
Such psychological scarring became more pronounced in the decades since, accompanying a
global upsurge in cultism. Beginning in the 1980s, the Hindu and Buddhist personality cults
spread beyond the West and were joined everywhere by fundamentalist cults, in which
charismatic preachers fanned flames of hatred, fear, and militancy; health cults in which doctors
and self-styled specialists espoused formulaic approaches to disease, obesity, and
unhappiness; and self-improvement cults championing “secrets” to financial success, career
advancement, and the ability to win more friends. Again obsession, delusion, and denial came
to the fore, eroding self-esteem. Consequently today, hundreds of millions of individuals
worldwide lack the psychological strength to recognize their own exploitation and abuse at the
hands of cult leaders.
Cult leaders, for their part, are only human and therefore as prone to vulnerability as their
followers. In fact, it is out of excruciating vulnerability and lack of ethical grounding that they take
advantage of their followers, encouraging the personality worship and reveling in the authority,
money, and adulation streaming their way. Whereas genuine spiritual servants, inherently
guided by expansive principles, would have no interest in asking people to pay for meditation
classes, cultic gurus are apt not only to commercialize spirituality but to incline minds
indoctrinated by materialism into regarding the financial investment itself as a sign of spiritual
growth. A cult leader teaching meditation, like a man inviting starving guests to dinner but only
allowing them to eat vicariously through him, cannot mitigate the group’s spiritual hunger.
Devotees of all sorts would be wise to heed the advice of British author George Orwell, who
said, “Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.”30
There are many ways in which cult leaders capitalize on the psychological dependencies they
instill. Offering themselves as holders of “the final answer,” cult leaders secure a loyal following
that attend to their material needs. Those who enforce sexual hegemony are ensured of a
variety of sex partners who consider intercourse with their leader a form of worship. Leaders
who physically or psychologically mistreat their followers can expect supplicating requests for
freedom from the pain they inflict.
Cult leaders also profit from the threat of war. After 9/11, several meditation gurus capitalized on
promises of world peace if only their methods were given a chance. Others charge hundreds of
dollars for simple mantras they declare are not just sounds but divine peacemaking and
consciousness-expanding principles with “aspects” in each of the five senses. Actually, a
common beginning meditation technique involves simply watching the breath and mentally
chanting any sound that is free of undesirable associations, such as “Hong-Sau” repeated with
the inhalation and exhalation, respectively, or “Aum,” “Omne,” “Amen,” or even the
devotionally-based “Jesus Christ” with the inhalation, “Son of God” between breaths, and “Have
mercy on my soul” with the exhalation. On their own these chants accompanying observation of
the breath trigger a shift in brain activity and a slowing of the breath—at no cost.
Other lucrative offerings on behalf of world peace include one group’s request of the
international community for a billion dollars to build “peace palaces” in which meditators would
send out “vibrations of cosmic consciousness to the world.” The group also offers lessons in
“yogic flying,” tendered for a minimum of $3,000 per student. Of special appeal to vulnerable
seekers, yogic flying calls for mentally chanting Sanskrit sutras, or aphorisms, and bouncing on
cushions for hours in an effort to “lift off.” Ancient texts that refer to flying mention nothing about
bouncing or world peace, but rather cite a pranayama technique for controlling a particular
nerve current in the body that can take decades to master, if it is possible at all; furthermore,
Vedic and yogic writings were originally meant to be chanted for purposes of transmitting the
information from one generation to the next, not for use as autosuggestive exercises.
Subscribing to the fraudulent flying technique is akin to believing that the chanting of written
material about architecture erects buildings. And unsurprisingly, the outcome most often
associated with mastery of unusual yogic abilities is pride, not peace.
Too often, cultic solicitations in the interest of world peace are nothing more than thinly
disguised attempts to capitalize on the fear of protracted global violence—a distinction
indiscernible to most devotees. Secure in the narrow sense of identity conferred on them as
“spiritually elite,” many fail to see that a cult-generated technique heralding world peace might
be preposterous. Nor do billion-dollar propositions to create peaceful vibrations seem
farfetched. What matters more than anything else is the cushy invulnerability to the
psychological and social stresses of our time. But this comes at great cost: once obsessed with
possessing “special knowledge,” captivated by delusions of grandeur, and driven by the power
of denial, it takes almost superhuman effort to operate in the realm of free thought.
The greatest pitfall concerning today’s many alternatives to organized religion—cultic,
devotional, and spiritual—is their inability to promote self-determination. One difficulty is that
their survival depends on uniformity of conviction. Unlike hospitals that patients leave upon
healing, most of these groups model themselves after religions, insisting on obedience and
centralization of spiritual powers while discouraging independent thought, challenges to
authority, and self-reliance. In addition, the temporary strengthening and consolidation of the
self that occurs after identifying with a new body of seekers gives the mistaken impression that
the self has found its true home. In fact, quite the opposite has occurred: the self has slipped
steadily away from its course of expansion, dropping anchor in murky waters. The way back, as
well as a good preventative against drifting off in the first place, can be found through the
practice of Technique 16.
TECHINIQUE 16
Self-Reliance
Organized religions maintain that great beings of the past, such as Moses, Jesus, and
Muhammad, communed with God for us and our task is to believe in those labors, attend
worship services, drop money in the minister’s till, be nice to people, and rely on religious
authorities to infuse our lives with meaning. The teachings of Eastern mystics such as Krishna,
the Buddha, Patanjali, and Kabir, however, advocate a very different prospect for finding more
meaning in life: self-reliance. Their methods for accessing the truth reveal that the acquisition of
nonfinite knowledge, power, and bliss is anything but facile and unable to be achieved by proxy.
Emulating the great mystics’ lifelong reliance on looking within as the avenue to self-knowledge,
seekers establishing a well-balanced discipline can continually fortify their sense of self-reliance.
As you come across a teacher’s spiritual tenets or techniques that might serve this purpose,
fine-tune your inner response to them by asking yourself these basic questions: What aspect of
the self does this discipline amplify? How might it influence my sense of identity? What will it
require of me in terms of time, money, and self-esteem? Is it provocative enough to inspire effort
on my part? What is the teacher’s understanding of God? What is the goal of the practice? How
does this discipline define daily success—in terms of a deepening dependency on the teacher
as a conduit to truth or, instead, a realization of my own connection to substance? How is this
success tested?
In learning to use ideas of self as a sounding board, be suspicious of prepackaged answers to
challenging questions. The self, especially when profoundly vulnerable, can easily be drawn to
quick fixes, such as mastering yogic flying in a week, losing weight with minimal effort,
becoming wealthy overnight, finding romance on every corner, believing in a sure passage to
heaven, and attaining instant enlightenment. In stark contrast, the teachings and the lives of
ancient ascetics make it abundantly clear there is no simple and painless trajectory to great
spiritual accomplishments.
The self that resists confusing spirituality with a lack of critical thinking gradually overcomes its
sense of helplessness, unfolding more and more of its infinitude as it clears a trail inward. In the
process, one comes to regard the self as the repository of lasting knowledge, power, and bliss,
whereupon the infinite self—in lieu of an external authority—becomes the measure of all things.
To be godlike, in this context, means to be utterly self-reliant.
Just as the path of reliance on spiritual authorities ends in a cult’s artificial bolstering of the
vulnerable self, the path of self-reliance terminates in its opposite: unity with the substance of
self. As always, vigilance is required, for it is tempting to lapse into a ritual purporting to
eradicate fear-provoking patterns of insecurity and disempowerment. The decision to opt
instead for a well-tested inner discipline promises a form of reliance that seeks, rather than
fears, the unknown.
In some respects, if the sacrifice of the narrow self is the negative pole of spirituality,
self-reliance is the positive one. As a teacher, I go to great lengths to provide students with the
methods and material that support expansion but avoid providing any temptation to rely on me.
Good company and assistance in sense-introversion are valuable so long as the principles of
self-reliance are foremost. It is too easy for the vulnerable self to rest its efforts in the company
of a teacher on which it projected hope and glory.
It might be argued that reliance on one’s teacher is unavoidable early on, but I find it hard to
reconcile fostering even a moment of reliance on any avenue to intuitive knowledge except the
self. Perhaps this argument is true for other disciplines but when it comes to self-knowledge
students are invariably coming from some measure of self-dependence. Mimicry of ascetic
habits and practices is one thing, but furthering dependence makes little sense emotionally or
intuitively.
Decades of Western experimentation with alternatives to organized religions have failed to
produce a socially unifying spiritual ideal capable of remedying the self’s excruciating
vulnerability. What has emerged in its place is a new breed of narrow identification with
self-styled gurus and meditation masters, sexual predators posing as authorities, and
unabashedly egotistical marketeers. At the present juncture, amidst today’s disempowerment of
the self lost in the commercialization of health, abundance, and spirituality and the death throes
of outdated institutions, the recovery of its expansive capacity, more urgent than ever before,
requires the decentralized vigor of intuitive science.
Celebrating Apostasy
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. . . .
Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant
day into the answer.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
Institutionalized religions and their modern-day counterparts are not just belief systems but also
social networks connecting followers to family and friends, imbuing their lives with familiar
symbols and comfortable memories, and giving them a sense of place and purpose.
Consequently, long after beliefs are found to lack usefulness and a viable context in the modern
world the religions that espouse them can still serve social functions. Many people seeking to
preserve family and holiday traditions or community harmony will therefore refrain from
questioning their religion or spiritual affiliation. And for those who do raise questions, apostasy
may be a solo event—stressful at first, perhaps, but following deepened understanding and
communication with loved ones, a choice worthy of celebration.
A questioner’s deepened understanding begins with a view of apostasy as freedom from
exclusive group identities and of others’ resistance as a fear-based psychological response to
disturbing the foundations of these identities. Young children, who have no fixed group identities
to defend, are unafraid of asking formative questions. Among children who are later instructed
to adopt a group identity, the interest in questioning it quickly diminishes. By adulthood, few will
have challenged their limiting identity unless it caused them severe intellectual or emotional
difficulties. Among adults still identifying with group imperatives adopted decades before, the
tendency is to occasionally explore select assumptions but more often shut out questions, and
questioners, for fear of collapsing the only identity they know and finding no other to take its
place. But regardless of how old a belief system and its corresponding identity may be, they
cannot long endure unless they are born anew in the indoctrination of children.
Further understanding emerges with the realization that questioning the assumptions underlying
exclusive group identities is not only an intellectual exercise or truth-seeking endeavor, but also
a personal and social duty. It can feel like an obligation to one’s self to embrace a larger self
and thereby stop suppressing the natural expansion of the heart. At the same time, it becomes
clear that a person who chooses to experience more of their humanity can foster expansion in
others. With this social feedback in full effect, narrow belief systems and the insular identities
they encourage could theoretically be abandoned in a generation.
In times of stress especially, it is essential to reach for the pinnacles of understanding that
propel forward momentum: a broad perspective and unwavering personal motivation. A
questioner lacking in either of these attributes can easily get stuck judging a former group
identity or even relax back into it. But when the perspective broadens, it becomes possible to
stop devaluing an earlier identity and instead regard it as the very catalyst that provoked a
deeper examination of spiritual roots, revealing truths that underlie all religions and spiritual
organizations. From this vantage point, future discoveries do not discredit beliefs accepted in
the past but rather give them viable meaning and purpose.
In terms of motivation, only by pressing beyond a former group identity can a questioner
encounter vistas of experience that reduce divisiveness. The stronger the individual’s resolve is
to privately question dogmatic beliefs while testing the theory of self, the more tempting it can be
to communicate the resulting thoughts and feelings socially. But discussing progressive spiritual
ideas with unsympathetic listeners, especially loved ones who still affiliate with the beliefs, can
be harrowing and needlessly alienating. At this point the stress of apostasy is overcome in large
measure by understanding the mechanics of group identification, one aspect of which is that a
group identity attains validity in people’s minds through social intercourse which, like sexual
intercourse, entails a component of satisfaction.
Suppose, for instance, that I want to be part of a group with you and you want to be part of a
group with me. Though I may affirm that I belong to the group and you may affirm that you
belong to the group, no group exists until we share our affirmations with each other. When I
then tell you that I identify with our group and you tell me that you do as well, we recognize
happily that our ideas of self encompass us both. Mirroring the joy of the expanding sense of
self within the confines of a group identity reinforces its exclusivity.
The mechanics of group identification also reveal that the stronger a group identity becomes,
the more its members tend to view it as their purpose in life and defend it at any cost. And since
the group identity has no reality outside of their minds, they avoid this painful realization by
projecting their idea of the identity onto others. The strengthening of a group identity culminates
in efforts to recast humanity in its image.
A third aspect of group identification to bear in mind before engaging in discussion with loved
ones is that a group determines its boundaries in response to real or imagined adversaries. In
other words, if I see you as a contributor to the identity of a group to which we both belong I will
be kind to you; considerate of you; recite unifying anthems, chants, and pledges with you; and
affirm our shared identity by displaying group symbols for you to see or using group language in
your presence. If instead you appear to be straying from the group, I might lie to you, blackmail
you, or attempt to destroy your reputation for endangering what I perceive to be the group
identity, all the while considering my reaction moral and just. By inventing a threat, a group more
clearly defines its boundaries and intensifies member cohesiveness.
The mechanics of group identification are so intrinsically antagonistic that it would be prudent for
a questioner early on to avoid introducing personal discoveries to affiliated loved ones. Rather
than risk estrangement or reversion by engaging in potentially heated debates about the theory
of self, one can simply apply its principles in day-to-day life. To personify the theory of self is to
silently communicate its most powerful ideals—and perhaps the only way to dislodge patterns of
narrow-mindedness in oneself and others. A biased mind will often entertain new thoughts in
response to the silent physiomagnetism of a naturally expansive heart.
Pioneers setting forth on a path of spiritual investigation are advised to avoid conversations with
loved ones until the spirit of inquiry has taken root, preferably through participation in
colloquiums with people they may not know very well. After extensive investigation, an individual
ready to renounce a former belief system and embark on the science of intuition might again
feel challenged to express dissatisfaction to loved ones remaining in the fold. Communication at
this juncture can be uniquely rewarding to both parties.
Learning that someone dear to them no longer accepts the tenets of their faith may at first
cause loved ones to worry intensely about life-and-death issues. They may wonder, for
example: Will my child still go to heaven? Will my sibling be able to cope without the support of
the congregation? Will God look upon my spouse as an infidel? Will my beloved friend be
without spiritual company for countless lifetimes? To set loved ones at ease and perhaps win
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